This house would impose an estate tax

An estate tax is a tax on a person's property at the time of death before it is transferred to anyone else. An estate tax is different from an inheritance tax, which is a tax on property one receives from the estate of someone who died. The U.S. government has an estate tax but does not impose inheritance taxes, although many states do. One purpose of an estate tax is to encourage the transfer of property through inheritance or charitable giving. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed a federal estate tax, saying, "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government." Opponents of the tax argue that it is the wealthy the drive the economy and employment, and therefore to increase their taxes is to increase the burden on the nation as a whole. By 2009, the estate tax was imposed on estates valued above $3.5 million at 45%. While the debate is often framed only as a class-war debate (with the wealthy being seen as the potential benefactors of a ban and the poor the losers), it also encompasses other questions that are unrelated to class and wealth. The effect on the US fiscal budget is one consideration that is particularly heavily debated with some estimating the costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars and other estimating much lower costs