Estate Tax Stays

The latest from Washington is that the efforts by conservatives to eliminate the estate tax has been defeated in the Senate. Here’s the New York Times story: Senate Rejects Effort to Cut Estate Tax

This is good news for fiscal conservatives who want to attack the Federal Deficit. It is a victory also for ordinary Americans who would have suffered had the tax been eliminated because the lost revenue would either have been replaced via an increase in other taxes or a cut in services. The only people who would have benefited from the elimination of the tax would have been a very small number of very wealthy families, like the family of the founder of Wal Mart, and an equally small number of business and farm owners who are unable to make enough money from their busineses to pay the tax off over the fourteen years allowed to them. In my view the benefits of keeping the tax vastly outweigh the costs. Especially when the deficit is as out of control as it is.