April 20, 2001
The Honorable Charles Grassley
Chairman
Senate Finance Committee
135 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Grassley:
The purpose of this letter is to encourage you and the congressional leadership to take a cautious, measured approach to reform of the federal estate tax law.
Specifically, this is to urge rejection of outright repeal in favor of increasing the dollar amount exempted from estate taxes. This will have the effect of protecting small family farms and businesses while avoiding serious consequences for important charitable entities like our educational institutions, both public and private, that depend on private gift support to ensure educational quality. Such an approach would also steer clear of unknown and potentially harmful consequences associated with a radical change in a public policy that, for most of the last century, has had an undeniably salutary effect on developing and maintaining some of our finest eleemosynary institutions. Indeed, educational leaders in other nations today are urging their governments to emulate the incentives for philanthropy found in the current American tax code.
If the United States is to continue as a world leader in higher education, then it must continue to be a world leader in philanthropy. While donors are motivated by many factors, the estate tax law figures prominently in their decisions to donate approximately $3.0 billion to education each year through a combination of outright bequests and deferred charitable gift instruments. The latter have doubled as a percentage of total individual giving during the past two decades and often are highly significant to the success of modern educational fund-raising campaigns.
Our nation has established an enviable record of success in stimulating private giving to education. The quality of American higher education has been built upon a remarkable partnership of public and private support. As you consider changes to the estate tax law, I urge you to take actions designed to build on that record in this new century. Reforming, not repealing, the federal estate tax program is the most educationally, fiscally, and philanthropically responsible course of action.
Sincerely,
Vance T. Peterson, Ph.D.
President
cc: The Honorable Orrin Hatch
The Honorable Frank Murkowski
The Honorable Don Nickles
The Honorable Phil Gramm
The Honorable Trent Lott
The Honorable James Jeffords
The Honorable Fred Thompson
The Honorable Olympia Snowe
The Honorable Jon Kyl
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is the largest educational association in the world, with 3,200 institutional members in 45 countries. CASE is the leading resource for professional development, information, and standards in the fields of educational fund raising, communications, and alumni relations.
