Even so, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to RAISE the estate tax as the top marginal rate is 40% (the 4th highest in the OECD). This argument might just imply that we should maintain the current inheritance tax and not repeal it like many of our peers.

Also, I don’t have access to the entire article but it seems to me that they are advocating that the estate tax should apply to more people rather than only the uber-wealthy. Basically, just lower the minimum threshold to tax a higher percentage of the population.

I would like to see more research as well. I would imagine that there is a high enough rate in which wealthy people would move to other OECD countries to avoid paying the tax entirely. It also could potentially distort behavior like a wealth tax but both of these are dependent on how much parents care about leaving their children with large fortunes.

It’s actually a very interesting topic as there is such a large divide between countries. South Korea and Japan have high inheritance taxes (>50%) while so many others like Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden have none at all.