Breaking Up Fortunes

by Nick Tabor

The rich have too much. Hiking the estate tax would be a powerful tool in a broader anti-inequality campaign.

Forbes recently released the latest installment of its “Where Not to Die” guide, an annual public service to geriatric one-percenters. The magazine knows that millionaires, as maximizers of rational utility, commonly decide where to spend their golden years based on projections of how much of their money the government will seize once they’re no longer around to use it themselves. This year’s news is good for the millionaires and bad for everyone else.

The guide helpfully includes a map that marks in bold colors all the oppressive states that impose an estate or inheritance tax, drawing particular attention to Maryland and New Jersey, which have both kinds. Eight states have decided to reduce or eliminate these taxes in the near future, and a similar proposal is now gaining ground in New Jersey, as the governor scrambles to impress tea partiers ahead of a possible presidential bid. Tennessee will wipe out its estate tax by 2016; five other states have done the same since 2010