Rich Neal: “of all the taxes that could be repealed, this is perhaps one of the least justified. The rhetoric would state that the…”

“of all the taxes that could be repealed, this is perhaps one of the least justified. The rhetoric would state that the Federal Government is decimating the lives of millions of families yearly by snatching away their hard-earned savings just when they are most vulnerable, driving small business and farm families into oblivion while squeezing every penny possibly out of them. The facts have been stated before, but let me state them again. Only 2 percent of the families are even subject to estate tax under current law. Of this 2 percent, only 3 percent are families with small businesses or farms. In other words, for every 10,000 estates, only six of them are farms or small businesses subject to the estate tax. To put it visually, if this piece of paper represents all estates, then this tiny part of it represents the issue in front of us today and what we are about to do. Of course half of the people in my district think they are going to pay. That misconception is what makes this work politically. Acknowledging reality, however, does not mean that there are no steps we can take to ease the problem for those who are subject to the estate tax or ease the minds of those who think they are. Those steps are represented today by the Democratic substitute. Our substitute reduces the maximum tax rate by 20 percent to 44 percent.”