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F or the past 90 years and at key points through-
out American history, the Federal Government
has relied on estate and inheritance taxes as
sources of funding. Proponents have frequently
advocated that these taxes are effective tools for pre-
venting the concentration of wealth in the hands of
a relatively few powerful families, while opponents
believe that transfer taxes discourage capital accumu-
lation, curbing national economic growth. This ten-
sion, along with fiscal and other considerations, has
led to periodic revisions of Federal estate tax laws,
affecting both the size of the decedent population
subject to the tax and the revenue collected.
The Statistics of Income Division’s Estate Tax
Studies
The Statistics of Income Division (SOI) and its pre-
decessor organizations have compiled statistics on
estates that file Federal estate tax returns since the in-
ception of the tax in 1916. These data have been in-
strumental in both administering the tax and forming
a better understanding of the financial arrangements
employed by the nation’s wealthiest individuals.
Data from estate tax returns are regularly used
to estimate annual revenues and to project future re-
ceipts. These data have also been used to support the
analysis and debates that occurred in crafting the tax
law changes chronicled in this paper. In this context,
estate tax data have frequently been used to evalu-
ate the effects of the tax laws on the economic and
social behavior of the very wealthy. For example,
the effects of estate taxation on the longevity of busi-
nesses and farms, as well as the effects of the tax on
a decedent’s propensity to make charitable bequests,
have been important considerations to policymakers
when debating changes in estate tax laws.
In addition to using estate tax data directly for
tax policy administration, these data have formed
the foundation for periodic estimates of personal
The Estate Tax: Ninety Years and Counting
by Darien B. Jacobson, Brian G. Raub, and Barry W