OK - Oklahoma's Death Tax: Still Not OK

by Edward J. McCaffery and Keith Davidson

In May 2000 OCPA published an analysis entitled "Oklahoma's Death Tax: Not OK." At that time, Oklahoma stood almost alone in having a state-level estate tax, and the tax was inefficient, unfair, and unwise.

Now that both the Oklahoma Speaker of the House and the state Senate Republican caucus have indicated that eliminating the death tax is a priority for 2006, it's a good time for Oklahomans to reexamine this issue.

Death Taxes in Context

We begin by discussing the federal gift and estate tax (or "death" tax) at some length, because it is the standard against which all American death taxes must be measured. Prior to 2005, this federal law allowed a state-level "pick-up" tax that simply piggybacked on the federal levy, generating revenue for states without increasing the total death tax burdens on their citizens. Instead of writing a single check to Uncle Sam, heirs would write two checks one to the federal government, one to the state government but the two amounts would add up to the same amount as the single payment to the feds would in a state without the "pick-up."1 Thus there was no very good reason for a state not to have a pick-up tax; the money was there for the taking, a result of the unwise and unfair federal death tax. It didn't hurt anyone except possibly one's distant Uncle Sam for a state to have a pick-up tax. And so most states did.

This pick-up tax "freebie" has now been eliminated as part of the landmark Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA), the first major tax cut of President George W. Bush's administration. EGTRRA gradually weakened the federal estate tax, lowering its rates and raising its exemption (or "zero bracket") level from $1 million per person to $3.5 million per person by 2009. EGTRRA even repealed the federal death tax altogether for a single year, 2010. In 2011, the federal death tax returns at its pre-EGTRRA levels, making 2010 the "throw momma from the train" year (as the usually not-so-witty estate planning profession has come to call it) for families seeking to avoid this dreaded burden.

What's important for Oklahoma is that EGTRRA also eliminated the pick-up tax beginning in 2005, replacing the federal tax credit with a deduction. Now any state-level death tax costs heirs and families real money, because at best they can get a deduction from federal estate taxes for the state levy, getting, in essence, half but not all of their money back.
Most states reacted to the loss of the pick-up tax by doing nothing, thereby effectively eliminating any state-level estate tax whatsoever. Some states "decoupled" from the federal system, restoring a separate state-level death tax and giving their citizens a deduction from the federal levy. But these states still rely on the form of the federal tax, so there is no reason for a separate state-level form or for state-level bureaucrats, and the total sting of the state tax is limited by the maximum amount of the deduction allowed under federal law.

In this environment, Oklahoma keeps standing out like a sore thumb. Oklahoma, surrounded by pick-up tax states prior to its elimination, never embraced the pick-up tax. Oklahoma had and still has its own state-level death tax it was one of only three states (including Mississippi and Ohio) with a state-level tax that went above and beyond the pick-up tax. With the pick-up tax now gone, Oklahoma still is in the minority of states to have any type of death tax. Worse yet, Okla-homa's death tax is more complicated and bizarre than the federal version or any other state's version of the death tax because the Oklahoma death tax only applies to some decedents, and it's a rather odd lot indeed.

The Oklahoma death tax has long been out of synch with its federal cousin.2 In 1998, the Oklahoma Legislature passed long-overdue legislation to bring the exemption level under the state death tax in line with the federal exemption level, but that was before EGTRRA when the federal exemption was set to increase to $1,000,000 by 2006. EGTRRA changed the exemption level to $2,000,000 for 2006 and the exemption level is set to increase to $3,500,000 by 2009. Oklahoma has not made any adjustments to its own estate tax to account for the changes made to the federal law under EGTRRA. Oklahoma decedents leaving their estates to anyone except a spouse (since state, like federal law, has a qualified deduction for wealth left to a spouse) may face an additional state-level tax, in addition to having to complete forms and deal with arcane differences in the two taxing regimes, because of the differences in the exemption levels. The same result applies to decedents having any sized estate whatsoever but no lineal descendants to pay an additional state-level tax.3 The separate Oklahoma death tax forces thousands of people to fill out forms every year, and keeps a state bureaucracy employed where none is needed. As it becomes more prominent because of the federal effort to reduce or permanently repeal the death tax lock, stock, and barrel, there will be ever more reason for individual Oklahomans to take steps to avoid the adverse effects of the tax.

Unintended Consequences

Is this concern mere paranoia or some kind of "supply-side" fear? Hardly. Even before EGTRRA, in June 1999 Forbes magazine featured an article titled "Death Traps" and subtitled "You can't beat the Grim Reaper. But you can outrun the state tax collector." The article featured a large color-coded map, clearly showing Oklahoma's status as a death-tax state surrounded by non-death-tax neighbors.4 Following the publication of the Forbes article, New York got with the times, abolished its own death tax, and became a pick-up state. A main reason motivating the New York legislature was fear of emigration to Florida, one of the enlightened majority of states. Louisiana and Connecticut also got with the times, repealing their separate state-level inheritance taxes.5

Now, with the elimination of the pick-up tax, some states have effectively reintroduced state-level death taxes by "decoupling" from the federal law and accepting a deduction. Again Forbes published an article, this time in March 2004 titled "Florida or Bust" and subtitled "Suddenly it matters a lot, for death taxes, where you die."6 This article featured numerous examples of taxpayers moving to Florida to escape the high price of dying in their home state. The savings to taxpayers has increased their incentive to move out of state prior to death. Yet these savings are modest in comparison to the potential state-level tax in Oklahoma, with its own separate death tax, one whose very exemption level is now one-half that of the federal tax.

What, exactly, might an Oklahoman do to avoid the dreaded death tax? The best ways to avoid the Oklahoma death tax are to
spend all of your wealth;

move to almost any other state;
get more money; or
give everything away to your kids.

It's hardly sensible tax policy to encourage behavior like dying broke or leaving the state. Nor does it make sense to punish moderately wealthy decedents who have no lineal descendants.
Table 1 shows what kind of revenue the death tax generates for the state treasury an average of $78.2 million over the last dozen years. This may sound like a lot of money to some, but it's only about one percent of total state tax revenues, and only about one-half of one percent of total state government collections.

Worse, if almost any of the incentives generated by the perverse tax become real, the Oklahoma death tax could well cost the state money. If a handful of moderately wealthy Oklahomans move to Texas or some other state to avoid the tax, the state loses ongoing revenue from income taxes, sales taxes, and other taxes. This logic persuaded legislatures in tax-hungry states like New York and Massachusetts to abandon their death taxes for the sake of money, if not morality.7
It's time to stop the insanity. There is no good reason for persisting in a death tax. The Oklahoma state-level death tax is complicated, unfair, inefficient, and raises little money by any account. The odds of its losing money, all things considered, are high. Worst of all, one should think, whatever money it does raise is dirty money sucked from the deathbeds of unfortunate Oklahomans. In a world of nutty taxes, such a state-level death tax might be the nuttiest.

Federal Death Taxes: A Bad Idea

America has had a death tax in some form since 1916, the first year that the modern personal income tax was put in place. This federal death tax is a bad idea. Understanding how the tax works and what's wrong with it8 are relevant to the case against state death taxes for two reasons.

One, the basic inefficiency and immorality of death taxes strongly suggests that states should not add their own insults and injury to the federally imposed harm.

Two, it is important to understand that the case against the federal death tax is a strong one that has resulted in its repeal (albeit for only one year) under EGTRRA. While on the one hand this suggests that states might want to shore up their own state-level death taxes, as some states have done by "decoupling," a more reasoned appraisal suggests just the opposite course of action. Now that the pick-up tax has been eliminated, the handful of states having their own death taxes stand out all the more.

Oklahomans who may not have left the state to save tens of thousands of dollars are now confronted with tax savings in the hundreds of thousands. Articles like the Forbes piece from March 2004 demonstrate the increased incentive to leave home before death. The already bad situation is likely to get worse. All of this suggests that state-level officials listen to the more general case against death taxes, and learn to wean themselves from this misguided tax.

The Tragedy of the Lears

Sometimes a story is worth a thousand or so academic words or is at least more fun to read. Co-author Edward McCaffery, a self-described liberal Democrat, has been pressing an argument for many years, in many venues across the country, that the federal death tax is a bad tax because it is an "anti-sin" tax or a "virtue" tax it falls on just those activities we should want our most economically productive citizens to be doing.9 A simple fictional tale gets the main points across perfectly well.

King Lear and his wife have three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. The Lears are wealthy and well advised. Every year, they give each daughter the full $22,000 that the law allows them to give, tax-free. It is a fairly simple matter to put this money into trusts, so that the daughters cannot spend it imprudently. Over time, this can get to be a big deal indeed.
Invested in the stock market at its historic 10 percent rate of return, each daughter would have more than one million dollars ($1,000,000) by the time she reached age 20, more than three million ($3,000,000) by age 30, and nearly nine million ($9,000,000) by age 40. No taxes need be paid. The Lear daughters can easily manipulate tensions within the income tax with their wealth investing in non-income-producing assets or tax-exempt bonds, for example and so they need never pay any income, payroll, or any other kind of tax. Nor need they ever work a day in their lives.

It can get worse. Suppose that the Lears decided to endow their favorite daughter, Cordelia, with their full gift tax exclusion amount, two million dollars ($2,000,000), at the time of her birth. Very wealthy Americans can easily afford to do this. Supplemented with the $22,000 annual gifts, Cordelia would have a personal fortune of almost one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000) by her fortieth birthday. She could live happily ever after at a spending level of ten million dollars ($10,000,000) or so a year all without ever paying a penny to her (distant) Uncle Sam.
The current income-plus-death tax with all of its loopholes and flaws a tax built up and defended in the name of fairness allows and even encourages this sort of thing. It's a travesty, at least, if not a tragedy. Not only is the current death tax so porous as to call its claim to fairness into question, it also falls when it falls at all on the wrong parties. Let's look at the possibly divergent fates of the Lear daughters, in terms of their choices of how to live and in terms of how much they pay in taxes.
Suppose that Lear had cleverly taken advantage of the annual exclusion amounts to build up trusts for each of his daughters. As each turned 21 years old, Lear presented her with the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000), completely tax-free to both parent and child. From this equal starting point, the three children then go off in different directions down life's possible paths.
Regan, the eldest daughter, spends all of her money nearly at once, partying and carrying on. She then resorts to begging her parents for more. But at least she has avoided paying any tax, under the current flawed income-plus-death tax system.

Goneril lives somewhat more prudently. She buys an annuity that guarantees her something like $75,000 a year for life, free of taxes. She lives rather comfortably off this as a single woman in fact, her lifestyle is exactly the same as someone who worked hard and earned $150,000 in wages, but saw one-half of these earnings taken away in a combination of federal, state, and local income taxes, payroll taxes, and other expenses of the working world. When Goneril later marries, the family lives off of her husband's income, while Goneril's "trust money" (as she calls it) continues to subsidize her personal spending habits. Goneril outlives her husband and spends all of her inheritance from him, too.
When she dies, broke, her three children inherit nothing. In this scenario, Goneril, like her elder sister Regan, never pays any federal taxes no income, no social security, no gift or death taxes on account of her own work or savings. Indeed, she has never worked for pay or saved anything in her life, which has been spent in a steady pattern of dissaving her father's and her husband's money.

Cordelia, the youngest daughter, follows a different route. She puts her one million dollars ($1,000,000) into an investment account, prudently managed in stock funds. She vows to withdraw some of her capital only if need be if an emergency should befall her, say, or if she should need the money to help care for her beloved father in his old age. Meanwhile, Cordelia continues her education and gets a job as a nurse, paying a decent salary of perhaps $40,000 a year. From these earnings, Cordelia pays something like $10,000 in various taxes every year, living a comfortable life with the remaining $30,000, or $2,500 a month. Cordelia marries reasonably well, as they say. She, her husband, and their three children never withdraw any savings from "Grandpa's gift," as the family takes to calling it. When Cordelia dies at the age of 84, the King Lear legacy, invested again in stocks at the familiar 10 percent rate of return, would have grown to over five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000).

But if Cordelia tries to pass this on to her children and grandchildren, to live as she did, the government will take away the majority of the wealth up to three hundred million dollars ($300,000,000) of it in taxes. Cordelia, alone among the three daughters, will have paid tax and quite a bit of it, at that. She alone among the Lear daughters contributed work and taxes to the common pool of social resources as she lived. In reward for her thrift, she alone among the Lear daughters got to contemplate a further and most onerous tax as she lay dying.

There is something odd about this. All three daughters were equal as of their twenty-first birthday. The major difference between them is that Cordelia chose to work and save throughout her life, and her elder sisters chose to spend. The taxman added another difference: Cordelia, alone, was asked to pay taxes, in life and at death. But why should the frugal and thrifty among the rich be taxed and heavily, at their deathbeds while the spendthrifts who live luxuriously are not?

State Death Taxes: Not Always a Bad Idea (Historically)

The general case against death taxes applies pretty much in full force to state-level death taxes. There was, however, prior to EGTRRA, one prominent exception: the so-called pick-up tax allowed by Internal Revenue Code Section 2011. The reason that this was not a bad tax was simple: it was not really a tax at all. Things are strange indeed in tax policy, so let's take a little time to explain this.
Soon after World War I, with the federal death tax still in its infancy, there was a move to repeal it. It seems that no one, except perhaps for the politicians who spend the money the tax appears to take in, has ever really liked the idea of a death tax in practice. In any event, Congress considered an outright repeal of the death tax in the 1920s. What emerged instead, however, was the precursor to current Code Section 2011, providing a credit for state level taxes.10

The state death tax credit means that one's federal taxes are reduced, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, up to what was then a large percentage of the total federal death tax (a 16 percent rate) for state death taxes paid. In essence, the government simultaneously nationalized death taxation and turned the proceeds over to the states. The federal government could set the rules and the uniform rate structure, while to the extent of the pick-up, 16 percent, states would get the money.

There was a bad and a good reason for the pick-up strategy. The bad reason was to co-opt state politicians to support the unpopular, unfair, and inefficient federal death tax. The good reason was to get states out of the game of having their own death taxes, to prevent an arbitrary and inefficient array of different death tax regimes, and to keep states from having a "race to the bottom" to compete over lower death taxes.

Whatever the reasons for its existence, because of the federal credit for state-level death taxes, there was no additional insult added to the injury of death taxation by a state's having its own pick-up. Granted, it might have been ultra-moral if a state were to have no part of this blood money at all. But then the money would just sit in Uncle Sam's coffers, and that's asking a lot of state legislatures. Given that we still had a federal death tax, there was no very good reason not to live up to the pick-up possibility.

Going Beyond the Pick-Up: Not OK

Going beyond the pick-up, however, adds insult and injury to the harm of the federal death tax, and so is bad for all the reasons that any death tax is bad. For relatively little gross revenue, state-level death taxes add to the stress and expense of those estates facing the federal death tax. The absolute evil of state death taxes is compounded by a relative harm. As more and more states abandon their own death taxes, the unfairness and inefficiency of those states that persist only increases.

With the elimination of the pick-up tax, most states have simply gotten out of the business of linking death and taxes. This makes repeal of Oklahoma's separate and unique death tax all the more compelling. Think of the absurdity: the moderately wealthy should leave Oklahoma and move to Florida, Texas, or California in order to save on taxes!

Oklahoma applies its death tax in especially bizarre ways. Transfers to spouses are exempted, as under the federal law, though there are complexities here that do not always track the federal beast.11 Very wealthy estates in essence get pick-up status, because the Oklahoma death tax rates do not rise as steeply as the federal tax does, so at some point one gets de facto pick-up status. Under the 1998 changes, once fully phased in, most transfers to lineal descendants will not generate a separate death tax. There are additional complex rules for family businesses and what not. But all of this leaves some bizarre and arbitrary holes. Specifically, almost any transfer to someone who is not a parent, lineal descendant, or spouse will trigger some death tax, and the extra burden will fall hardest on moderate estates.

Consider just some of the absurdities:

The Oklahoma death tax is unfair to small and mid-size estates that do not have lineal descendants or that desire to make bequests to others. If a person died in 2005 with a $1,500,000 estate and left this to her brother or sister, she would have owed no federal death tax but a $115,200 Oklahoma tax.

The Oklahoma state-level death tax is needlessly complicated. Because of the very existence of this state death tax distinct from the federal one, thousands of small to mid-sized estates have to pay an Oklahoma death tax where none is due in federal taxes. In all cases, separate forms and rules must be considered. This trend is only going to get worse, because the Oklahoma-level exemption is not keeping up with the federal one.
Death taxes raise little real revenue for Oklahoma, as indicated previously in Table 1. Worse, the Oklahoma death tax is unlikely to raise much if any net revenue if even a small fraction of the perverse incentives it generates come to be acted on. Citizens can easily move to another state to avoid the tax, as recent national magazine articles suggest that they do.
Worst of all, whatever money the Oklahoma death tax raises is blood money a deeply unfair and arbitrary levy on certain moderately wealthy Oklahomans who are unable or unwilling to leave their hard-earned savings to spouses, parents, or lineal descendants.

A Tale of Four Oklahoma Widows

Let's take a moment to expound on this final point about the arbitrary and unfair moral nature of the Oklahoma death tax. Taxes are largely about raising revenue, of course. But in picking out some and sparing others, legislatures make decisions that have moral effects. If possible, we like to tax socially harmful activities, like drinking and smoking; if necessary, we like to have fair rules for taking a fair share from citizens based on their earning or spending decisions, as in income or sales taxes. But some taxes like death ones are perverse on this score: they fall on good behavior, and encourage bad (or at least arbitrary) behavior.
Looking into the Oklahoma death tax enabled us to generate another story to help illustrate the craziness of the tax. We have sometimes found it hard to explain in serious, academic language how strange and unusual death taxes are such talk puts even the true believers to sleep, and invites technocratic mumbles about "diminishing marginal returns to wealth," "level playing fields," and other mantras of the liberal stick-in-the-mud crowd. I have found, as with the Lear example, that it's best put in terms a child could understand.

Consider then the curious case of the Four Oklahoma Widows.

The four sweet little old ladies are remarkably similar. Each is a retired schoolteacher, widowed, living out her days in a small house in Guthrie, having sold the family farm after her husband's death. Each has a comfortable net worth of $1,000,000, and lives, simply but well, off the income. Each has a son and a daughter who have moved to California and become "real estate" millionaires. Each also has a brother and sister, less well off, living in Oklahoma City. Each has a last will and testament, duly signed and notarized, leaving everything except some personal family treasures to the more needy brother and sister.
One fine day in the not-too-distant future (say in 2006), each widow sets out to have a big day.
Widow Number 1 goes to Las Vegas to blow it all. She comes home broke but happy.
Widow Number 2, after an emotional chat with the longstanding family accountant, picks up and moves to Texas.
Widow Number 3, after an emotional chat with her family accountant, visits her family lawyer and changes her will to leave her fortune to her son and daughter, the millionaires in California.
Widow Number 4 does nothing special, happily tending her garden.
By a cruel twist of fate, each widow passes away in her sleep on Day 2.
Now, gentle reader, guess which widow if any must pay any additional Oklahoma death tax?
Widow Number 1 doesn't have to pay one, because she has died broke.
Widow Number 2 doesn't have to pay one, because she has died a Texan.
Widow Number 3 doesn't have to pay one, because she has left her fortune to her lineal descendants in California.
Only Widow Number 4 a moderately wealthy woman, a hard and good saver, neither too rich nor too poor, who is unwilling or unable to give her fortune to her own lineal descendants need pay any separate Oklahoma death tax. Specifically, $115,200!
What sense is there in that?

Conclusion: Get with the Times!

The time to act is now.
Favorable revenue conditions mean that Oklahoma is not dependent on the small amount of revenue that might be lost in abolishing its state-level death tax.
The increasing movement of other states and national trends isolate Oklahoma, and make it more likely that some of the bad consequences from having a state death tax will come into being. All of Oklahoma's neighbors have seen this light or at least read the national news accounts and abolished their own death taxes.
More and more moderately wealthy Oklahomans may be subject to the bizarre planning and distortions of the state's death tax.
Oklahoma sits on the horns of a dilemma. On one horn, its death tax may continue to raise very little revenue, even in gross. If so, simplification, efficiency, and fairness give powerful arguments for repeal. On the other horn, because of decreasing federal death taxes, increasing Oklahoma wealth, or both, the state-level death tax might get more punch, and raise more money. But if it does, this will only generate more attention and disrepute to Oklahoma, leading to embarrassment and more likely bad consequences.
Worst of all, the tax is flat-out unfair, falling on an arbitrary group of economically productive citizens, and resting on arcane distinctions that no longer make any sense, if they ever did.
In short, there is no reason not to act. It is time truth be told, it is past time to kill the Oklahoma death tax.
Edward J. McCaffery (J.D., Harvard Law School) is Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School, Visiting Professor of Law and Economics at the California Institute of Technology, and of counsel in the Los Angeles office of the law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. Keith Davidson (J.D., Loyola Law School) is a trust and estates lawyer with the firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. His practice focuses on complex estate planning, premarital agreements, trust administration, trust litigation, and charitable organizations.

Endnotes

1 IRC 2011.
2 For an excellent discussion of the differences, see Mark R. Gillett, "The Oklahoma Estate Tax: Modest Proposals for Change," 49 Oklahoma Law Review 213 (Summer 1996).
3 There is no exemption level under Oklahoma's death tax for bequests left to "collateral heirs." See 68 Okla. Stat. 807 (exemptions) and 803 (rates of tax). Prior to the repeal of the state death tax credit in 2005, because the Oklahoma death tax started in right away but only reached a top rate of 15 percent as compared to the maximum 16 percent allowed for the state death tax credit under IRC Section 2011, at some fairly high level about $125 million the Oklahoma death tax on transfers to non-lineal descendants fell below the allowable pick-up amount. Now all Oklahomans dying with estates over approximately $1 million must consider the state-level death tax, and the sting keeps increasing with the size of the estate.
4 Carrie Coolidge, "Death Traps," Forbes, June 14, 1999, pg. 329.
5 Ronaleen Roha, "Good Riddance: The Empire State is the Latest to put an End to its Death Tax," Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, April 1, 2000.
6 Ashlea Ebeling, "Florida or Bust," Forbes, March 15, 2004. Available at http://www.forbes.com/personalfinance/estate_planning/free_forbes/2004/0315/171_2.html
7 This phenomenon is well discussed in Gillett, supra, and in contemporaneous news accounts of the New York repeal. See, for example, Roha, supra. See also Jan M. Rosen, "States Cut Death Tax to Keep Rich at Home," The New York Times, Sunday, January 23, 2000, Section 3, pg. 12.
8 For an extended discussion of the history and nature of the federal death tax, see http://www.ocpathink.org/ResearchAndIdeas/The_Federal_Death_Tax.pdf. The basic operation of the death tax is easy enough to state. When a person dies, the government adds up all of the assets in her estate at their then-fair-market value. It next adds in the value of any taxable gifts she made during her life that is, gifts over and above the annual exclusion amounts. Finally, the government subtracts debts. If all of that comes out to less than $2 million (using the estate tax exclusion amount in 2006) as it would for the vast majority of American decedents there are no further questions. If the decedent's estate is worth more than $2 million, the government next subtracts out any qualified transfers to a surviving spouse. Then and only then would a death tax be paid.
One positive of the fair-market assessment of assets is that the heirs receive the assets at a "stepped-up basis" for income tax purposes, under IRC 1014. For instance, if a piece of farm ground was in the family since it was homesteaded it could have a "basis" that approached zero. On transferring to the heir after a death it would have the basis of the current fair-market value, so if the heir were to sell the property he would only pay the tax on the amount that exceeded the fair-market value. Simply put, if fair-market value was $800 at date of death per acre and the heir later sold the farm for $900 per acre he would only pay tax on the $100 difference. However, if the stepped-up basis for fair-market value was not in place, the heir would pay tax on the entire $900. Since only estates over $2 million are currently being taxed, one can see how the government could conceivably receive a huge windfall at the expense of those heirs whose parents and grandparents had held assets such as farm land for long periods of time an unintended consequence of death tax repeal. Therefore, when repealing the death tax, both federal and state policy-makers should be careful to keep the current transfer of "stepped-up basis" in place to prevent a backdoor death tax on unwitting heirs.
9 See, for example, Edward J. McCaffery, "Grave Robbers: The Moral Case against the Death Tax," Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 358, October, 1999; reprinted in Tax Notes, December 20, 1999; "Being the Best We Can Be (A Reply to Critics)," 51 Tax Law Review 615 (1996); "The Political Liberal Case against the Estate Tax," 23 Philosophy & Public Affairs 281 (1994); "The Uneasy Case for Wealth Transfer Taxation," 104 Yale Law Journal 283 (1994); "Tax Spending Not Work, Savings," Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1999; "Celebrate the Deceased, Don't Tax Them to Death," Seattle Times, April 9, 1999; "The (Moral) Case Against Carveouts," 79 Tax Notes 122, April 6, 1998; "Rethinking the Estate Tax," 67 Tax Notes 1678 (1995) reprinted in Selected Readings In Tax Policy: 25 Years of Tax Notes (1998); Testimony, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Tax, Finance, & Exports, In re the Estate Tax, March 25, 1998; Testimony, U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, In re the Estate Tax, June 7, 1995.
10 See Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation Report, JCS-37-84, at n.11, September 28, 1984; see also Rafool, supra.
11 Discussed in Gillett, supra.

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