Trump family would get $7B windfall from estate-tax plan: analyst

Donald Trump’s family would get a $7.1 billion tax cut under the Republican presidential nominee’s proposal to eliminate the federal estate tax, a centrist think tank estimated.

“The staggeringly high value of the tax cut for the Trump dynasty alone carries the same price tag as multiple high-value national priorities,” Third Way said in an analysis Wednesday.

{mosads}Trump proposed repealing the estate tax in a tax plan he released last year. The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center has estimated that Trump’s plan as a whole would cost almost $10 trillion over a decade and disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Economic advisers to Trump are working on revising the tax plan to reduce its cost, but the advisers have not explicitly said they were making any changes to the plan’s treatment of the estate tax.

Instead of giving Trump’s heirs a windfall, Congress could spend that $7.1 billion on expanding Pell Grants for three years, funding efforts to find a cure for cancer for seven years, finance career and technical education and skills for a generation and support electric-grid investments for more than 10 years, Third Way said.

The think tank came up with the $7.1 billion figure by estimating that Trump’s estate would be valued at $17.7 billion in 2030, the year actuarial tables estimate that Trump’s family would inherit the money.

Third Way calculated that Trump’s estate, minus an exemption for $15 million of it, would be subject to a 40-percent tax if the estate tax is not repealed.