Texas oilman J Howard Marshall II died six years ago, aged 90, leaving up to $1.6 billion (€1.75 billion) in accumulated wealth. America is riveted by the fight that is still going on over his estate. The son, Pierce Marshall, claims to be the sole heir, and is challenging a court decision awarding $475 million to the nonagenarian's young bride of one year, Anna Nicole Smith.
At a hearing in Texas his lawyer alleged that Anna Nicole Smith, a former stripper and 1993 Playmate of the Year, took off her blouse as she coaxed him to say on tape that he was leaving half the estate to her. There was, apparently, a witness to this touching moment.
There was another interested party waiting in the wings as the old man expired: the US tax collector. Under federal law an estate tax of up to 55 per cent is levied on inherited assets exceeding $675,000. Should she keep her share of the fortune, Anna Nicole Smith will be liable to pay more than half to the revenue commissioners as estate tax.
If President George W Bush, another Texas oilman, gets his way with Congress, this tax will now be abolished and future heirs will be able to inherit the lot. Mr Bush made this a campaign promise in response to lobbying from farmers and business owners who fear their families will have to sell up to pay estate tax when they die. Many of the legions of Americans who became affluent during the 1990s boom also don't want to donate half their new-found wealth to the government.
Mr Bush's proposal has come under criticism from Democrats, as might be expected, but it has also been assailed by some Republicans, and to his surprise by a number of the super-rich whose families stand to benefit most. These include Warren Buffett, the fourth-richest American, Bill Gates senior, father of the Microsoft billionaire, David and Steven Rockefeller, whose names are synoymous with inherited wealth, and currency speculator George Soros.
One of their arguments is that rich people would not be so inclined to make huge donations to charitable foundations, on which no tax is paid, and that while undeserving kids would become rich, voluntary good works would suffer.
Mr Buffett said distributing wealth on the basis of heredity was like "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics".
A petition signed by 120 wealthy people was published in the New York Times on February 14th opposing abolition. It argued: "Repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America's millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet."
Mr Bush's supporters put that another way. The tax hits people who build businesses so that their children will have enough financial backing to become doctors, teachers, architects and scientists, argued Holman Jenkins junior in the Wall Street Journal. "The estate tax sucks up savings and turns them into consumption, also known as pork-barrel or government spending, reducing the total supply of capital."
The pressure on the Bush administration looks like forcing a compromise in the form of an increase in the portion of excluded wealth or a cut in the rate. Even some Republican states want a retreat. They don't want to lose the cut they get from the estate tax, which the US Treasury estimates will amount to $29 billion nation-wide this year.
The campaign to keep estate tax is organised by a Boston-based group, United For A Fair Economy, which has now gathered 300 signatures, including that of actor Paul Newman. The organisation, which has its roots in a relatively new "guilt culture" among wealthy Americans, also campaigns against excessive remuneration to chief executive officers, whose pay jumped 535 per cent in the 1990s compared to a 32 per cent increase in average worker pay.
A signatory pointed out that as technology fortunes dwindle with the Nasdaq, Wall Street chief executives, Philip Purcell of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and David Komansky of Merrill Lynch, received $37 million and $32.6 million respectively last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Anna Nicole Smith knew her marriage to J Howard Marshall would be short-lived. As talk show host Jay Leno put it: "She asked him to act his age and he did: he died." Now, she may have to part with half the inheritance. All of which proves that nothing much has changed since Benjamin Franklin said in 1789: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
