Creating An Incentive For Murder & Suicide

Several other bloggers (including Mish and Paul Krugman) have discussed recently the perverse incentives created by the temporary one year abolition of the inheritance tax in the United States. I wrote about it already in 2007, and there's not much to add, except that whether or not you think inheritance taxes should be permanently abolished or whether they should never be abolished, a temporary abolition of a tax of that kind is not a good idea given the perverse incentives created. And that the failure to address this represents a government failure.