As Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin has significant influence over how tax policy is crafted and enforced. But he doesn’t think that sway should be used to ask for more contributions from modern day aristocrats.
“The super-rich have plenty of gimmicks so that they don’t need to pay the estate tax,” Mnuchin said at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. He was asked by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) about Trump’s plans to fully abolish the tax.
Mnuchin had hit out against the estate tax just beforehand, when asked about it by Budget Committee Chair Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
“We think that Americans should be taxed once and not twice—that the Death Tax is unfair,” Mnuchin said. “And especially, for those family businesses that want to continue on.”
The estate tax does not impose a levy “twice,” nor does it tax “death.” It takes some inheritance windfall from people who have done nothing to earn the money, except have the good fortune of being related to or friendly with someone who has died.
Sen. Sanders jumped on Mnuchin’s answer to Enzi to point out that the estate tax, in its current form, “only applies to the top two-tenths of the one-percent.”
“Ninety-nine point eight percent of Americans would not gain a single nickle if the estate tax is repealed,” he added.
Sanders also weighed deep cuts to numerous social programs that the Trump administration is proposing, and singled out rich families that stand to benefit from the policy change.
The senator mentioned Walmart owners, the Walton Family, who stand to gain up to $52 billion from an estate tax repeal.
Sanders also cited as benefactors prominent Republican families—the Kochs and the Trumps themselves. The Trump family, he said: “would get something like a $4 billion tax break.”
“I’m not going to comment on the specifics of the Waltons or the Kochs,” Mnuchin replied before noting they have made “philanthropic contributions” and have undertaken estate planning. He then offered a general defense of the Trump administration budget.
While an estate tax repeal might not offer a benefit to the wealthiest families, if paired with upper income tax increases, that doesn’t appear to be something the Trump administration is considering.
Details of Trump tax reform a sparse thus far, and fiscal policy depends heavily on Congressional input. But Mnuchin said on Monday that the White House would not consider vetoing any tax package that gives rate reductions to the richest Americans. He had previously promised “there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.”
“Mr. Secretary, you made a commitment that there would be no absolute tax cut for the wealthy,” Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said at Tuesday’s Senate Budget Committee hearing. “And yesterday, you changed that.”
