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House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted:	November 9, 2017 02:33 PM
From:	Representative Anthony M. DeLuca
To:	All House members
Subject:	Stop Congress from Repealing the Estate Tax

In the near future I will be introducing a resolution asking Congress to leave the estate tax intact. Repealing the estate tax, which is a tax on assets transferred from a deceased individual to their heirs, is part of a new tax proposal by majority leaders in Congress. Eliminating the tax would be a windfall for billionaires whose wealth would forever escape taxation, and further entrench a larger and more durable inheritance class. This is bad for our country and state, and has significant consequences. The estate tax is a tax on very large inheritances for an extremely small group of extremely wealthy individuals; 99.8 percent of transferred estates owe no tax under it at all. The high dollar threshold makes it so that any estate affected would belong to the absolute wealthiest in America. The threshold has gone from $650,000 per person in 2001 to approximately $5.5 million per person in 2017, or roughly $11 million per couple. Put another way, a married couple can inherit $10.9 million dollars without paying any estate taxes under the current system. The estate tax has also been misrepresented as hurting ordinary families and forcing the sale of family farms and businesses. In fact, of the existing 2.7 million estates in the U.S., only 5,500 estates would be subject to the estate tax. Of that number only 80 are small farms or businesses and nationally only 20 farms a year are subject to estate taxes, equating to less than 1 in 100,000 farms. If the estate tax is removed, those benefitting would receive staggering windfalls averaging more than $3 million apiece for the top .2 percent of Americans, and more than $20 million for the most wealthy estates. As all citizens owe a share of their success to the hard work of generations of Americans before them, and the infrastructure that has allowed them to succeed, it is patently unfair to allow these enormous estate transfers to go untaxed. Please join me in asking Congress to keep the estate tax intact.

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