Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1983
Abstract
For several decades, total revenues raised by estate and gift taxes have roughly equaled those raised by excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Yet no law journal has ever asked me to write on alcohol or tobacco excise taxes. The law firms of America do not routinely have divisions devoted to excise tax planning. We do not hear of the suffering of widows and orphans (or even of farmers and small businesses) because of alcohol and tobacco taxes. Philosophers and economists do not routinely debate the merits of such taxes. Perhaps most significantly, increases in such excise taxes do not arouse fears that we are about to eliminate the concept of private property in this country and embrace socialism, or even communism. The estate tax, however, evokes just such responses.
Disciplines
Law | Property Law and Real Estate | Taxation-Federal Estate and Gift | Tax Law
Recommended Citation
Michael J. Graetz,
To Praise the Estate Tax, Not to Bury It,
93
Yale L. J.
259
(1983).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/254
Included in
Property Law and Real Estate Commons, Taxation-Federal Estate and Gift Commons, Tax Law Commons