Posted on November 15, 2003

Public Affairs

The National Priorities Project, a nonprofit organization that helps the public understand and shape the federal budget, has created a series of fact sheets on the proposed repeal of the federal estate tax and its impact on eleven states. According to NPP, eliminating the tax would cost the nation $982 billion over the next twenty years. For each of the selected states, the organization provides a fact sheet showing the state's estimated share of estate tax revenues over the next two decades and how many schoolteachers, firefighters, and scholarships that revenue could support. The site also presents a case for keeping the tax at its current levels, arguing that it's a progressive tax on the wealthiest Americans that serves to dilute the concentration of wealth in the United States and provides an incentive to the wealthy to leave money to charity.