Some of America’s richest families have spent millions of dollars lobbying to receive what would be a multi-billion dollar windfall in the form of an inheritance tax repeal.
The effort, according to a report issued by Public Citizen, puts under the microscope conservatives’ objections to the impact of what they routinely describe as an anti-Main Street “death tax.”
“Despite claims by opponents of the estate tax that their efforts to repeal it are driven by concerns over family farms and small businesses, nine families owning approximately $137 billion in assets have lobbied directly on the issue in recent years,” the non-profit watchdog stated in its investigation. .
“If the law were repealed, these families would stand to save up to $25.7 billion in estate taxes, or perhaps as much as $54.8 billion.”
Many of the families have themselves spent money on influence peddling that has “contributed to perpetuating the myth that the estate tax harms small businesses and family farms,” the report additionally stated.
Listed in the report as being the driving forces behind the effort are families tied to Mars Inc., Wegmans Food Markets, Cox Enterprises and Hallmark Cards. The Mars and Wegman families spent $3.5 million lobbying on the “death tax” alone between 2012 and the first quarter of this year.
Under the current law, according to a March Joint Committee on Taxation report, only 0.2 percent of all deaths in the US are expected to lead to any federal inheritance levy until 2024. A repeal of the inheritance tax would cost the country just less than $30 billion annually in the form of lower tax revenues, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Read the full Public Citizen report here.
