Tax Analysts: TaxWire: Treasury Holds Roundtable on Estate Tax Repeal

Treasury Holds Roundtable on Estate Tax Repeal

The Treasury Department hosted an event November 6 to rally around President Bush's plan to make the estate tax repeal permanent beyond its 2011 expiration.

Treasury Secretary John Snow thanked the roughly 80 attendees -- a group of conservative economists, government officials, congressional aides, and small business advocates -- for participating in the "Jobs, Growth, and the Abolition of the Death Tax" roundtable held in the Treasury's Cash Room. "Our focus on spurring job creation is a big reason for convening this roundtable on the death tax. The other reason is more an expression of our core values: the death tax is simply unfair and wrong," Snow said in his opening remarks.

Although the event was closed to the press, Treasury released Snow's statement and distributed copies of handouts to the media. Snow said participants would develop a better understanding of the costs and consequences of the estate tax and would gather the latest economic studies about the tax. But one attendee said the event did not produce any new analysis or data. "It seemed much more like a pep rally for pro-repeal people," he said. "Everyone there was very much on the same page."

The most recent report handed out at the roundtable was a 14-page Joint Economic Committee study commissioned last June by JEC Vice Chair Jim Saxton, R-N.J., and House taxwriter Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash. According to a JEC press release for the study, The Economics of the Estate Tax: An Update, the report documents the effect of the estate tax on capital formation, thrift, continuity of small businesses, and the environment.