These people are being snookered by the upper middle class. At $12 million, the estate tax exemption excludes all but the top 1% of wealthy. There’s over a million households in that group.
The top 10% own 70% of the wealth. The top 1% holds over 30%. But billionaires hold only about 3%. To meaningfully address wealth inequality, it’s not enough just to heavily tax Bill Gates. You have to heavily tax people like his father, a law firm partner. You need to heavily tax many of the folks here on HN.
Far fewer than 1% of estates pay an estate tax, but rather closer to a tenth of that. It's nowhere near a million households currently subject to it. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-many-peopl...
You might use that fact to support the second half of your argument, of course.
When people talk about wealth gap, they mean the ultra-rich, the multi-millionaires. For someone with a net worth of $20 million, a one time half-a-million does not make such a difference.
If you want to get rid of the estate tax exemption, you don't hit the Bezoses and the Zuckerbergs of the world, you hit the middle class.
And by the way, you don't even need to move a finger to cut that exemption in half. It will do that in 2026. If you so desire, you can write to your representative to tell them you'd be very upset if they vote for an extension of the current levels of the estate tax exemption.