Republicans have cleverly called the inheritance tax the “death tax.” It has become so widely used that even some misguided Democrats have used the phrase.
Now, Ohio voters are likely to hear it a lot more. A group called Americans for Prosperity is planning on circulating petitions to end Ohio’s inheritance tax. They passed the first hurdle in the process last week with the Ohio Ballot Board approved their proposed statute.
But the inheritance tax is not a tax on death. It is a tax on the transfer of wealth from one generation to another. President Roosevelt — Theodore, the Republican, that is — said this when he proposed an inheritence tax:
“The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. …
“The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”
In America, dynasties are not based on inherited titles, but inherited wealth. Think of the Rockefellers.
The inheritance tax should not cripple small family businesses. If that is the case as some claim, the law can easily be amended.
But there is no reason to do away with it. The inheritance tax is a tax on the living who acquire great wealth through no effort of their own. The tax is intended to level the playing field for all Americans; ending it would preserve inordinate power for a select few special interests.
In The Neutral Zone 