A new paper and brief explore how estate and inheritance taxes (or wealth transfer taxes) affect entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. It is a contentious issue. Efforts to repeal the “death tax”—or to slash the number of taxpayers subject to the estate tax, as recent federal legislation has done—appeal to concerns about hard-working entrepreneurs losing their life’s work to tax collectors dressed as the Grim Reaper. But the issue is not so cut and dried.
