It would be terribly wrong to repeal the estate tax. This would speed up concentration of wealth and power among relatively few families moving us rapidly toward becoming the kind of society from which our ancestors fled.

One who benefits enormously from our country’s remarkable social, commercial and government structures owes an enormous debt to them and should arrange that at death the bulk of the estate be returned to sustain the infrastructure: the educational, medical and charitable institutions. The estate tax is levied not on those who earned the wealth, but on people who usually did nothing significant to help earn it.

In the few cases when an intergenerational transfer of farm or small business would truly involve a real hardship special rules could apply.

Oliver Holmes

Eastport