step up in principal basis as some suggest, but that would impact everyone, not just the very tiny top. (since anyone inheriting something would then have to pay the gains back to purchase date/cost basis whenever they sold something) Not to mention would be very difficult to near impossible to determine what the cost basis was when great Grandpa bought that piece of art, or whatever. It also ends up taxing inflation but that's another aspect and applies to all Cap Gains.

And unlike shifting some taxes to a sales tax mechanism that collects from everyone at an equal rate, this is applied at an exorbitant and unfair rate to below 1% of the population. Yes, they can best afford it, but they also were likely already paying the highest/most progressive rates on their way there.

Again, if I were King for a Day, I would put in a very simple system along the lines of taxing all inheritances over say $100K/recipient (to eliminate filing for small inheritiances) a very low rate of say 5% or so on market value. That would capture some of those untaxed gains, be very simple to file, not penalize anyone with an outrageous rate, and most likely bring in much more revenue (since so many more would be paying and there would be much less incentive to avoid them).