youbet
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Aside from a general hostility to inherited wealth, I have a real problem with the step up basis on inherited assets. It is fundamentally unfair to those who have "paid along the way". But I suspect those who abhor the estate tax would also object vociferously to the elimination of this provision as well.
I dislike the step up basis provision for another reason........ It's another government effort to manipulate the way folks manage their assets. Older folks holding equities with large unrealized capital gains are strongly influenced not to sell in order to optimize their estate planning regardless of their opinion of the quality and prospects of the equity. I just don't like taxes that influence investment decisions. Makes for an inefficient market.
Regarding the estate tax in general, I've done some research into statistics of who actually pays and who would pay under various proposals and personally feel an estate tax with an exemption in the $3.5 million range (today's dollars and inflation adjusted) would impact very few of the folks I'd be concerned for. The average value of estates over $3.5 mil is in the mid-teens, even after taxation, the heirs would be wealthy by most standards.
As I've said to the point of boredom, loop holes must be closed. Here's the exemption level, here's the tax rate, pay.