As I understand it, the really despicable aspect of the drop in the estate tax rate to 0 in 2010 as currently scheduled is that at the same time the rule allowing stepped-up basis for inherited property would be repealed. This was apparently one of the revenue-estimating tricks they did in 2001. So, instead of the very small percentage of people who would pay tax on estates over $6 million, indexed, the Pritzker, Walton and Mars families, and others of their ilk, would pay no tax on their multi-billion-dollar estates, and everyone who inherits a house that their parents bought for $10,000 in 1950 and then sells it in 2010 for $350,000 would pay tax on the $340,000 gain. Some of us can never sell our houses, because we've been rolling over the proceeds of condos and prior dwellings and houses jointly-owned with prior spouses and capital improvements and periods of commercial use and generally such complex histories that it would take an archaeologist plus a team of accountants just to figure out what the basis was.