This book was written by two distinguished experts on tax policy and reviews the development of the campaign to end estate taxes at the federal level. In many cases it is quite informative. But compared to Jeffrey Birnbaum's book on the development of tax policy in Congress (Showdown at Guccci Gulch) is it quite light in a couple of areas.

The book begins with three questions - fundamentally, how did the coalition that formed get together, how did the repeal coalition successfully resist amendments, and finally how did an item like this (seemingly without a high level of support and which cost a lot of revenue and only affects a small number of people) not cause more generalized opposition to the Bush tax bill?

The book is excellent in some of its history (especially the chapter about the use of science in public policy) but is weaker in telling the story of how the current provision was adopted in a consistent manner. The description of the initial phases of the development of the coalition is pretty detailed. The coalition brought together some seemingly disparate interests.

Where the book falls down is in two areas. First, there are some amazing omissions in this book. Bill Gates' father was indeed a leader of the opposition - but at no place in the book does the narrative explain that Gates' father was an attorney who helped to structure estates and thus had a direct interest in the continuation of the tax. At the same time the authors keep coming back to themes - for example, a minor figure in the fight (farm owner Chester Thigpen) is highlighted more heavily than a key Senator like Max Baucus. I would also have liked to have these policy wonks think creatively about the elements of the estate tax which opponents might go forward with - when the inevitable fights come in the future. The opponents of repeal were inept - but how do they go forward? The last time the estate tax was eliminated (surprisingly not mentioned in the book) was in the 1954 revision - the problems which brought the tax back should be instructive to opponents of repeal.

The second area is the authors' limited understanding of how coalitions are built. This book should be more about the politics of the process. The concluding chapter decries the mix of research, politics and moral issues in the current political environment. Indeed, as one who writes about tax issues often, better research involvement could help the process. But the realities of politics that mix moral/philosophical issues and coalitions and evidence are what we should be thinking about.

So if you are interested in tax policy, this is a good book. But if you want to understand how tax policy is made in the real world - there are better books.

As a tax attorney, I was excited to purchase this book and get a non-partisan, in-depth look at what was going on with respect to the estate tax. Michael Graetz has a stellar reputation as a law professor, so I was doubly excited.

I was very disappointed that the book's political bias appears on virtually every page. I think reasonable people can disagree on whether we should have an estate tax, but Graetz presents each and every proponent of repeal as a self-interested opportunist. I would have liked to have seen an unbiased account of what "really" goes on in Washington, but this book failed to satisfy.

If you're looking for a book that will confirm your love for the estate tax, and need a reason to pat yourself on the back, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a book that gives you an unbiased account of the world of politics, this book isn't for you. I found Showdown at Gucci Gulch much more interesting.

My grandfather was born in the rural South in 1885. With little help from family and no help from his government, he put himself through college. He married, became a dairy farmer and sired seven children which he brought up and thoroughly educated (all seven went to college)during the Great Depression. Of those seven children, his four sons all became his working partners and one son lived and raised his own family on the family farm.
My grandfather worked HARD, all of his life, to buy and build up a large and prosperous farm. He had 21 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. One grandson was born with Down's Syndrome and will need costly, special care as he grows older. As an intelligent and well educated man, it is interesting to note that Grandfather started out his adult life as an ardent, LOYAL (his word) Democrat, serving in county politics as a Democrat. Toward the end of his life he switched to the Republican party where most of his progeny now reside.
When this fine, decent man died at the age of 99, his family was death taxed at the exact same rate as Bill Gates, the Kennedys, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffett, and every other billionaire roaming around today espousing the fine merits of the death tax.
This is the paradox surrounding those Liberals who defend the death tax: family farms ARE being shut down, cut up and sold to pay the death tax. In turn, those family farms are being bought up by developers who are then doing what the Liberal establishment deems so evil: destroying wetlands and natural habitats for wildlife, wreaking havoc with vast tracts of woodlands thus creating increased sprawl or, in John Denver's famous words "more scars upon the land".
All of this because of the supposedly egalitarian notion that the death tax is a well deserved tax for the super rich.
The only thing I have to say about the death tax is this: if we children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had wanted to sell half of the family farm (which we did NOT wish to do), we would have preferred to have been able to do so and then actually KEEP the proceeds of the sale rather than turn those proceeds over to the federal government.

This reviewer is a trusts and estates lawyer as well as a former NY State Senate legislative tax counsel, so the story behind the 2001 repeal of the federal Death Tax effective in 2010 was professionally interesting. However, the authors of Death by a Thousand Cuts did such a fine job of investigative journalism that this book should fascinate anyone interested in politics or even the people and culture of the US. The authors are a Yale Law School tax professor and a Yale College political scientist. They thoroughly understood their material. They explain clearly and choose vignettes and examples for their drama and human interest.

They begin with the question how a 55% top bracket death tax paid by less than 2% of US estates could garner enough opposition to be voted out decisively by both houses of congress. The surprises and drama mostly come from who started and led the battle for repeal and what motivated them. They take us into the heart and mind of a liberal Seattle newspaper publisher who was disgusted to see media chains gobbling up family-owned newspapers all over the country, more often than not because a family death forced sale to pay the confiscatory death tax. They show us a farm equipment dealer whose dealership has little cash but a huge inventory. When its owner dies it will too. They tell us that America's first Black billionaire took out newspaper ads to fight the death tax and that the Congressional Black Caucus supported repeal. It takes no imagination to see a tax imposed on grieving families as sadistic in general, but these particular stories are packed with drama and human interest.

The authors clearly favor the death tax and that makes their extensive coverage of pro-repeal arguments praiseworthy. Their bias comes forth more subtly. They tell where the anti-repeal forces could have argued better. They never strenthen the arguments of the pro-repeal side, although the possibility to do so was just as great. They tell us that Bill Gates' father (a trusts and estates lawyer) fought repeal and what arguments he used. They don't tell us that many prominent accountants and estate lawyers worked with him to protect their fees and that these professionals inspired ludicrously high estimates of lost capital gains revenues if the gift tax were repealed along with the estate tax. They trivialize pro-repeal ideas such as that an estate tax penalizes thrift and hard work. Well, it does.

This is as good a book on how legislation really happens as I have seen. Despite Bismarck's comment that one does not want to look too closely at legislation or sausage being made, this book falls short of the stomach turning impact of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. However, just as The Jungle inspired Pure Food and Drug legislation when Sinclair intended to convert his readers to socialism, this book may also, despite its authors' pro-tax bias, have unintended consequences. By gathering together the main arguments for repeal of the death tax and stating them clearly in one place, one would hope that the authors will inspire many readers to write to their congress members and senators and demand that death tax repeal be made permanent.

The authors, Professors at Yale University, wrote this book to explain how the century-old estate tax was repealed in a seemingly democratic society. This tax exempted 98% of the people, and was designed to work against an inherited money aristocracy. The estate tax was one of the most progressive part of the tax laws (p.3). The authors claim that support for repeal first came from various groups outside of Washington, and later used lobbyists and others in Washington. This was one battle in the war against progressive taxation on wealth and income. [The authors don't relate this to the monopolization of the press and broadcast stations, and the propaganda programs that include some "talk radio" shows.] The authors say these groups want to kill progressive taxation not by one big battle, but by a thousand small battles (p.5). George W. Bush's 2001 tax policies turned a large budget surplus into a great deficit. Manufacturing and jobs were destroyed as if hit by a neutron bomb.

The authors wonder why a tax that affects so few could be so successfully attacked. They must not listen to the paid propaganda from radio and elsewhere. It could also result from an exemption figure that was too low, given the relentless devaluation of the currency since 1964 (when coins were silver and the dollar was backed by gold). A million dollars is not what it was in 1963. Renaming the inheritance tax as the "death tax" make sit more threatening to people with fuzzy knowledge. The founding of America saw the law of primogeniture replace by the law of distribution so assets would be evenly distributed after death. There are no "property rights" per se, only living people can own property. The belongings of a dead person are distributed according to law and a will. Large inherited fortunes create an aristocracy, and this is inimical to a democratic society. Refer to American History before 1877. Inheritance in a legal privilege, not a natural right, when it comes to large fortunes. The republican ideal was to split up large fortunes so each could benefit from their work. In 1889 Andrew Carnegie argued for a death tax because giving great fortunes to children was a danger to them (p.233). Page 234 provides some examples.

The authors claim that the increasing number of people who own stocks made them believe they would be affected by the inheritance tax. Maybe it is more true that the $675,000 exemption was decades out of date. [Isn't that middle-class housing in many parts of the country?] That proposed raise in the exemption was too little, too late, and confirmed the idea of its wrongness (p.9). The organized coalition for repeal was not halted by assumption about the status quo. [This recalls Machiavelli's comments on the difficulty of changing laws when a well-organized group works actively while the opposition is disorganized.] The purpose of the estate tax was to break up large holdings, like those middle-class businesses (e.g. "20 gas stations") so the many could profit from their own work, and not create a class of the idle rich. One problem with the estate tax is that it doesn't apply to corporations. Vigorous anti-trust actions is needed to break up the mergers and acquisitions effected since 1980. Its never too late to correct these mistakes.

This analysis should teach us to understand politics. The next battle will be to create an oppressive national sales tax (the so-called "value added tax") that will create the high unemployment and economic malaise found in western Europe today. Or the so-called "Fair Tax" that will lower income taxes for the super-rich by raising them for working Americans. You can read "Greenspan's Fraud" by R. Batra for more details in a shorter book. The `Glossary' lists the various terms and used in the book.