A Voluntary Tax? Revisited

Abstract

This Article explains, updates and generalizes Cooper (1979), which had labeled the estate tax a tax. The tax has remained voluntary in the sense of being easily avoidable, even by those engaging in activities within the tax's ostensible normative target (i.e., significant intergenerational wealth transfers). Further, all taxes on the yield to capital are in this sense. The federal tax system, writ large, is increasingly a wage-based tax. Citizens who own large stores of capital can live - and die - tax-free using common tax planning techniques. These facts ought to call the normative justification for the status quo, including the estate tax, into question. A consistent progressive cash flow tax - without a separate estate tax - is a far better, more consistent tax on both the yield to capital and inheritance than is the present, highly flawed, income plus estate tax.