[JURIST] The US House of Representatives [official website] on Thursday approved the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015 [HR 1105, text], a bill set to end the federal estate tax [IRS overview], by a 240-179 vote. The tax, which Republicans refer to as the death tax, is applied to estates upon passage to an heir after the owner’s death. The current top tax rate is 40 percent, but exemptions of $5.43 million for a single person and $10.9 million per couple make it so the tax applies to less than 1 percent of estates. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, should it be passed by the Senate, because it is projected to add $269 billion to the budget over a decade. Without enough votes in the Senate for the measure to pass, however, many analysts believe House Republicans are positioning to make the estate tax an election issue. President Barack Obama’s latest budget [2016 budget overview] calls for lowering the per-person exemption to $3.5 million and raising the top tax rate to 45 percent, while doing away with provisions that allow capital gains passed to heirs to escape taxation. Proponents of the bill, such as its sponsor Representative Kevin Brady [official website], say that the estate tax is mainly felt by small business owners and farmers who have significant asset wealth such as land, but generate little income. Brady stated, “[t]hese are family-owned, hard-working, risk-taking, determined Americans who are building their business, their farm, their ranch. These are not, as we will hear today, the Paris Hiltons and robber barons of the Teddy Roosevelt days.” Opponents of the bill, including Representative Jim McDermott [official website], say the bill helps the rich get richer, stating that “[t]his proposed repeal of the estate tax is nothing more than a massive unfunded tax break for a small sliver of America’s wealthiest families.”

The House vote on HR 1105 ran mostly along partisan lines, with only seven Democrats voting for and three Republicans voting against the bill. The last time the House voted on estate tax repeal, the measure [HR 8] passed [JURIST report] 242-162, with 42 Democrats crossing party lines and voting in favor of the bill. The current model of the estate tax was passed [JURIST report] in 2006, by a 230-180 vote. That consolidated bill [HR 5970] also increased the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over three years.