Brookings Senior Fellow Henry J. Aaron (born 1936) last month published an op-ed in the New York Times that is now freely available online at Brookings:
If you play by the rules, working to earn a living and saving to provide for the future, taxes take a piece of your earnings. If you win a state lottery, you owe tax. But if you get lucky in the lottery of life and land an inheritance, you owe no federal tax. That isn’t fair, is it? Extending the federal income tax to include inheritances would end that inequity.
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