The Estate Tax Has Hit A Historic Low In America
Super rich heirs are getting to keep more and more of their late parents’ money.The share of estates that trigger the estate tax has reached a historic low in America, a new report has found. In 2019, the latest year for which the IRS has released data, only 8 out of every 10,000 people who died left an estate big enough to be subject to the tax.“Today the estate tax is the weakest it has been in its century-plus history,” said the report, by the liberal nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. For 99.92% of Americans, the report says, the estate tax is “irrelevant.”The culprits are a series of laws enacted by both parties that have steadily raised the estate tax exemption over several decades, as well as a boom in special trusts that the ultrarich use to avoid taxes altogethe...
