State-by-State: Costly Estate Tax Repeal Benefits Only Few Wealthiest Estates

With Republican leaders calling for repealing the federal estate tax in the upcoming tax debate, we’ve updated our estimates showing that the tax affects very few estates in each state and that its repeal would provide windfall tax cuts to the wealthiest heirs (see table).

The estate tax applies only to the value of an estate that exceeds $5.5 million per person ($11 million per couple). That’s more than middle-income Americans typically earn in a lifetime. Nationally, just 5,400 estates — the wealthiest 0.2 percent of Americans who die — will owe any estate tax in 2018, Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation estimates. And while President Trump called the tax a “tremendous burden” for small businesses and family farms, only 50 such estates will face it.

Repeal would provide millions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest estates and their heirs. Under a 2015 proposal that lawmakers re-introduced this year in both the House and Senate, taxable estates in 2018 would receive an average tax cut of more than $3 million. The 344 estates worth at least $50 million would receive tax cuts averaging over $20 million apiece. The proposal would also cost $269 billion over a decade, expanding deficits and, as a result, adding to pressure for cuts in federal programs.