Spencer Cox: “today we will repeal the death tax. We will send it to the President for the third time, but this time to a President…”

“today we will repeal the death tax. We will send it to the President for the third time, but this time to a President who will sign it. We hear arguments about why punitive confiscatory taxes on the after- tax life savings of hard-working Americans are somehow justifiable or somehow wise. The death tax is perhaps the most complicated part of the Internal Revenue Code, 88 pages. If one has ever seen a death tax return or, worse yet, if their family has had to fill one out, they know how extraordinarily complex and complicated it is. It is unfair and it is inefficient. Even if one accepts the revenue analyses of the minority, which posit that there are no compliance costs and no collateral effects associated with this very damaging tax, it raises but 1 percent of our total revenues. In fact, according to the Joint Economic Committee, the costs that the death tax imposes on the economy more than offset its collections, so that this tax is actually costing not only our economy and workers money but the United States Treasury, and income taxes, income tax collections, are depressed as a result of maintaining the death tax on the books. The death tax falls heaviest on people who have no money, because even though it is included in the income tax, one does not have to have any income in order to own it. All they have to have is property.…”