estate taxes were a scheme for social engineering based on the absence of a progressive income tax of any consequence. If you lose 50% of what you earn to taxes WTF should you lose another 50% upon death. Heirs to a fortune certainly did more to earn it than greedy politicians who use the estate tax to gain votes from the spiteful and the envious
You seem to subscribe to this notion that people pay 50% of their income in taxes. Its hard to blame you for that as it is a common understanding, but I assure you its a myth.
People that come to this conclusion want to add all of the highest rates of all the taxes on pays together in one lump sum and say "see, its 50%".... hence a myth is born. Unfortunately far too many people believe this myth.
This math suffers from many flaws in logic. The fact is that taxes kick in and kick out in ways that some just affect lower portions of your income and give way as higher income tax rates kick in on higher portions of your income, so they are never taxing the same dollar at the same time.
The fact of the matter is, the highest of amount of income that is likely to be taxed annually in almost all circumstances is about 35-37%.... The reason the idea of adding one tax on top of another does not work is that taxes kick and fall off at different levels. For example, those at the highest tax bracket are not taxed on FICA and the same time they are taxed at the highest bracket as FICA disappears at 110,000 of income and the highest brackets kick in at 357,000 so you would never add FICA and the highest bracket together. Due to deductions, exemptions and credits, 20% of your income just is not taxed. The early dollars of your income are taxed a 15%, then 28%, then 33%.. State income taxes exist, but they are deductible for federal purposes, so a 10% state income tax in the 33% bracket is really a 7% income tax. Then there are sales taxes, but here only the lowest incomes have significant percentage of their income go out in sales taxes. The highest incomes do not spend as high a percentage of their monies on consumables and thus sales taxes are an annoyance, at best. An 8% sales tax is not 8% on your tax bill. Property taxes are a function of your house. Although the wealthy have more expensive homes and higher property taxes, these tend to be a much lower percent of a wealthy persons income than a middle class person. I have run these numbers for multiple income scenarios on a spreadsheet to prove this point have a heated cocktail hour discussion....
So, stand down on this notion that you pay 50% of your income in taxes: not true.
As to the 2nd part of the notion that an estate would pay 50% tax at its creation then 50% at probate... again a misleading oversimplification. First off, if the estate were created with earned income (very, very unlikely) it was not taxed at 50% per reasons stated above. I really doubt too many people build an estate out of earned income (ballplayers and entertainers, maybe). More likely, the estate was created via capital gain (someone build a business and sold it), so most of the estate was likely taxed at 15-25%.
The issue of disposition of estate: It is not a 50% across the board tax. It has allowances, deductions, credits and exemptions. Most noteworthy, the first $1 million is not taxed. Granted, estate taxes are steep.
Given that we have to raise revenues and we have to tax, it seems that taxing estates (an event that moves assets from the creator to a member of the lucky womb society) seems one of the most equitable places to tax. It really makes little sense to concentrate capital in the hands of those who had part in its creation and likely have no clue how to use the assets productively. I would much rather tax estates than income or consumption... but that is me.