Republicans have been brilliant at creating narratives about the vast number of people oppressed by the big-bad tax system. I’ll bet that even some readers here, somewhere deep inside their brains, have retained the idea that the federal estate tax ends up hurting small farmers and people who aren’t really THAT rich that they should have to hand over a modest family nest egg.

Citizens for Tax Justice yesterday exposed the multi-billion scam–the scam being the attempt by the Republicans (and, I’ll wager, supported by a few so-called Democrats) to permanently repeal the federal estate tax. In a two-page analysis, CTJ reports that:

In 2003, 2,448,288 Americans died. But only 30,276 of these decedents left behind
enough to owe any federal estate tax in 2004 (when returns were generally due). This
handful of taxable estates paid $21.6 billion in federal estate taxes.

The 30,276 taxable estate tax returns represented just 1.24 percent of all the
people who died in 2003.

Most of the $21.6 billion in federal estate taxes was paid by a tiny number of the
very largest estates. The 520 taxable estates worth over $20 million paid more than
a quarter of the 2004 estate taxes.
And the 3,494 taxable estates worth
over $5 million—0.1 percent of
decedents—paid 62 percent of all
federal estate taxes.

So, bottom line, the overwhelming number of these estates are in the hands of a very rich few. Actually, this subsidy for the rich is already under way: under the Administration’s 2001 tax bill, the federal estate tax is being phased out. Its full repeal will be in place in 2010–but it will snap back to the pre-Bush level in 2011. But, Republicans are now pushing to make the repeal permanent–at a cost, the Center for American Progress estimates, will be $339 billion over the next decade.

Coupled with yesterday’s discussion of workers getting nothing out of soaring corporate profits, the estate tax scam is just another example of the massive shift of money from average people into the hands of a few. Revolution anyone?