O Democrats! O Republicans! They’re both so cwaazzzy!
So quoth Bloomsberg babe Megan McArdle, in a recent piece over the low-intensity but long-continuing furor over the inheritance tax/death tax. Sure, Republicans are a bit wacky for getting so sentimental over the supposed heartlessness of taxing multi-million-dollar inheritances, says Megan, but you know something? Those Democrats are just as bad! “Democrats spend a great deal of time fulminating about a tax that raises roughly no revenue for the Treasury.”
To prove her point, Megan links to a piece titled “Ten Facts You Should Know About the Federal Estate Tax”, though a more accurate title might be “Several Hundred Facts You Probably Won’t Retain About the Federal Estate Tax,” but for me the only one really worth retaining is this one: “The estate tax will generate about $275 billion over 2017-2026 under current law, according to CBO.” And that’s with some serious, Swiss-cheese style loopholes.
$27.5 billion a year? That’s chump change to you, Ms. Megan?
Afterwords
Rather remarkably, in a footnote, Megan tells us “estate tax law is riddled with absurd exemptions and ought to be reformed into something simpler, fairer, and harder to avoid.” Uh, why wasn’t that your lead, girlfriend?
