The Tax Policy Center has recently posted tables displaying the impact of the estate tax. The analysis shows just how few people would benefit from a repeal of the estate tax:

• In 2004, an estimated 18,800 estates will pay an estimated total $17.6 billion in estate taxes.
  • That’s just 1 out of every 15,587 people in the US who will pay an estate tax this year.
• In 2004, only an estimated 440 estates with significant farm or business assets will pay even a dime in estate taxes.
  • That’s about 2 percent of those who pay the estate tax, and just 1 out of every 665,989 people in the U.S..
• From 2002 to 2003, changes in the estate tax law have cost the federal government $13 billion.
• Over the next 10 years, the estate tax will raise $271 billion from only the wealthiest decedents.

Last Thursday, President Bush said that "the death tax is bad for rural America.” However, the numbers show that the president is using a very, very, very small number of people to sell a tax break that would benefit only a very, very small number of very wealthly individuals; and the rest of us will have to pick up the tab - the president is projecting a deficit of more than $500 billion for this year alone.

The real issues are not about rural America, and not about family farms or businesses; but rather about who would really benefit -- the wealthiest Americans, some of whom continue to pressure the administration with armies of lobbyists using “family business” as a misleading argument. (Although a large number of the wealthiest Americans do support the estate tax, see Responsible Wealth.)

Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, 20 of the 29 wealthiest members rich enough to qualify for the estate tax voted last year to cut the tax at the expense of the rest of us (see compilation by TechPolitics.)

• For a handy tool of how much people have to pay, see our Estate Tax Calculator