One of the many tax cuts Republicans are considering extending for the wealthy in their reconciliation bill is an estate tax cut for the country’s wealthiest, the latest in their decades-long effort to weaken this tax. This amounts to a $5.7 million tax cut for the wealthiest 1 in 1,000 estates in the country, whose value consists largely of unrealized capital gains income that has never been taxed. In 2017 the estate tax already applied to only the highest-value estates — only amounts above $11 million per couple were taxable — when Republicans doubled this exemption to $22 million.
That Democrats didn’t respond to the “death tax” rebranding by saying “ok, let’s just make the estate tax smaller but annual” is a great example of how we got to this absurd chapter of America.
We are beyond the point of return after CUvFEC.
