1) Estate taxes are unfair and constitute double taxation. People work their entire lives, pay their taxes and struggle to create an estate of value that provides security to the family and employees they leave behind. It is unfair to tax one's life earnings for a second time, robbing them in death of the family economic security they worked throughout their lives to provide.

2) Estate taxes are fiscally and economically counterproductive. Less than 1.5% of federal revenues come from the estate tax. Experts estimate that anywhere from 65% to 100% of that revenue is offset by administrative and compliance expenses. Fiscally, it is an IRS agent full employment program that punishes grieving families while providing minimal benefit to the government treasury after expenses.

3) Estate taxes affect nearly every American. In addition to the millions of Americans who are directly affected by the death tax, there are millions more who are indirectly affected as thousands of small businesses refuse to grow and invest in new jobs for fear of the devastating tax impact of a principle's death.

4) Estate taxes hurt small businesses, women and minorities. 61% of family business owners say that the payment of death taxes will limit their business growth while 13% say that growth will be impossible. Women whose life expectancy exceeds that of men are often left not only with the grief of a lost spouse, but with the painful burden of a death tax that threatens their children's security. The estate tax is particularly harsh on minorities whose families are accumulating wealth for the first time

5) Estate taxes destroy the ability of family-owned farms and businesses to be kept within the family and passed from one generation to the next. A family farm can easily be worth $ 10 million when the value of land, equipment and farm buildings are calculated. The farming income is a small percentage of the asset's value. Yet, when a principle dies, the family is expected to pay more than 50% of the asset values in cash for the estate taxes. It doesn't matter that many members of the family may have worked their entire lives building the farm up, making it successful. All too often, the family has no choice but to sell the farm. Their money was invested in land, in crops, employees and the American dream. But thanks to the estate tax, the family business is dissolved, a heritage is destroyed.

6) Estate taxes hurt the economy. A 1996 Heritage Foundation study found that a repeal of the estate tax would provide benefit the American economy over the next nine years (1) the nation's economy would average as much as $11 billion per year in extra output; (2) an average 145,000 additional jobs would be created; (3) personal income would rise by an average of $8 billion per year above current projections, and; (4) the deficit would actually decline due to the growth generated by its abolishment.