A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece alleged that the Congressional Budget Office had demonstrated that the most affluent Americans "pay too much" in federal taxes. This short paper uses that opinion piece as a foil to explain some of the concepts behind Congressional Budget Office...

This paper studies the optimal taxation of bequests in a model in which agents have heterogeneous preferences over their consumption and the net-of-tax bequest received by their heir. The bequest left by an individual depends on both her degree of altruism and the bequest received from her...