The Estate Tax Has Hit A Historic Low In America

Super rich heirs are getting to keep more and more of their late parents’ money.

The share of estates that trigger the estate tax has reached a historic low in America, a new report has found. In 2019, the latest year for which the IRS has released data, only 8 out of every 10,000 people who died left an estate big enough to be subject to the tax.

“Today the estate tax is the weakest it has been in its century-plus history,” said the report, by the liberal nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. For 99.92% of Americans, the report says, the estate tax is “irrelevant.”

The culprits are a series of laws enacted by both parties that have steadily raised the estate tax exemption over several decades, as well as a boom in special trusts that the ultrarich use to avoid taxes altogether.

At the most recent peak, in 1998, almost 2.5% of estates triggered estate taxes, a figure that has dwindled dramatically.

The first significant cuts came under President George W. Bush…