[Brakenshire]

Does the estate tax actually work in the US? Our equivalent in Britain appears to be a joke - anyone with a reasonable amount of money can just hire accountants to find some trivial way around it.

I think it's probably the most important tax, in terms of social equity - if you can easily pass down all your wealth from one generation to another, there are no wealth taxes, and capital reliably grows faster than the general economy, that is an obvious formula for the creation of an aristocracy - but I don't know whether it's compatible with the global financial system. Or perhaps it's just British politicians are particularly lackluster on cracking down on obvious avoidance schemes.

[nostromo]

Estate tax in the US only hits the upper-middle class. The rich avoid it entirely.

What makes my blood boil is that politicians that support raising the estate tax use trusts to avoid paying it. People like the Clintons:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-17/wealthy-cl...

They're not alone... The Kennedys, the Pelosis, even Noam Chomsky is set up to avoid paying the estate tax!

http://www.hoover.org/research/noam-chomsky-closet-capitalis...

[jhulla]

Not really. Estate taxes on large inheritances represent a tiny fraction of the overall federal tax revenue.

There are many techniques for circumventing/minimizing the tax. Law firms and accountants whose sole purpose it is to legally minimize this tax exist in every major American city.