The Estate Tax and Charitable Giving

Independent Sector Opposes Estate Tax Repeal (3/6/01)

Repealing the estate tax will hurt charities in three ways:

1. Drastically reducing the total value of charitable giving, both during lifetimes and as bequests. Last year, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers estimated that between $5 billion and $6 billion in charitable giving would be lost each year if the estate tax is repealed.

2. Removing a key incentive to create and add to private foundations. Currently, estates provide about one-third of foundation revenues.

3. Reducing government financial support for charities. Nearly one-third of charity revenue comes from government. Cutting off the revenue stream from the estate tax will likely mean cuts in government support to charities.

The estate tax generates significant charitable giving:

Total number of 1997 charitable bequests from estate tax returns: 15,500
Total value of those bequests: $14.3 billion
Average bequest by estates larger than $20 million: $41 million
Total number of charitable remainder trusts in 1997: 82,176
Total value of those trusts: $60.5 billion

Allowing wealth to concentrate will not boost charitable giving.

A common argument is that if the wealthy have more money, they will give more of it away to charity. The facts do not bear out this view. Estates subject to higher tax rates gave a larger percentage to charity than estates not subject to estate tax. President Bush himself is now proposing to extend the charitable deduction to all income tax filers because he expects it will boost charitable contributions.

The estate tax has played a crucial role in creating America’s thriving non-profit sector.

The estate tax encouraged the creation of our major twentieth-century foundations —Hughes, Mellon, Ford, MacArthur, Johnson, Pew, Packard, and others. It has also spurred donations of art collections to museums and the endowment of universities and hospitals. Repealing the estate tax threatens this entire legacy.

The U.S. and Western Europe have approximately equal GDPs, but in general, European countries depend less on the estate tax for revenue than does the U.S. In 1999, total charitable giving was $190 billion in the U.S. and only $20 billion in Europe. Repealing the estate tax would likely bring total charitable giving down toward Western European levels.

Gilded-Age philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie supported the creation of the estate tax.

"The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion…Of all forms of taxation this seems to be the wisest," Carnegie wrote of the estate tax in an essay entitled "Wealth."

America before the estate tax is hardly the model for a good society.

Supporters of estate tax repeal point to the years before the estate tax was enacted as the "golden age of philanthropy." It was also a time marked by concentrated wealth and widespread poverty. It was precisely these conditions which set the stage for the creation of the estate tax in the first place.

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