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WILL Republicans embrace class warfare? That unlikely scenario is playing out on the tax front, where social conservatives increasingly resent the importance the party’s business elite place on cutting estate taxes. Many pro-family types would forgo lower tax rates to get the $500 per-child tax credit.

But estate taxes are not just for the rich. Consider this: The current $600,000 exemption has been in place since 1987. Since then inflation (up by 42 per cent) and a booming stock market (up 200 per cent as measured by the S&P) have pushed many middle-class families into estate-tax territory. More than half (54 per cent) of the estate-tax returns filed in 1995 were from estates valued at less than $1 million. The government took 2.3 per cent of this group’s inheritance.

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Ed Rubenstein

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WILL Republicans embrace class warfare? That unlikely scenario is playing out on the tax front, where social conservatives increasingly resent the importance the party’s business elite place on cutting estate taxes. Many pro-family types would forgo lower tax rates to get the $500 per-child tax credit.

But estate taxes are not just for the rich. Consider this: The current $600,000 exemption has been in place since 1987. Since then inflation (up by 42 per cent) and a booming stock market (up 200 per cent as measured by the S&P) have pushed many middle-class families into estate-tax territory. More than half (54 per cent) of the estate-tax returns filed in 1995 were from estates valued at less than $1 million. The government took 2.3 per cent of this group’s inheritance.