A legislative effort to undo massive estate tax cuts passed by former Gov. Paul LePage was praised by tax fairness advocates and policy experts at a public hearing before the state legislature’s Taxation Committee Wednesday as a long-awaited step towards addressing the state’s growing wealth gap.
“[Wealth inequality] is way, way more concentrated than income inequality. It’s about ten times higher,” said Sarah Austin, the Maine Center for Economic Policy’s tax and budget policy lead. “The estate tax is the only real way we have to start breaking up that high concentration of wealth for people at the very top and making sure that those resources get spread back into the economy to help pay for things like education and health care.”
