It isn't often that both parties in Congress come up with equally bad ideas on the same topic, but Democrats and Republicans have managed it regarding the taxes paid on estates when someone dies. The standard estate tax currently affects only the mega-wealthy so, naturally, Republicans want to repeal it altogether. Democrats, meanwhile, are exploring a separate change to the tax code that would go in the other direction, making it expensive for even modest-income couples to pass their home-equity to their children. Both of these are shortsighted proposals that would hurt regular Americans.

First, the GOP's renewed push to abolish the estate tax — or as the party dramatically calls it, the "death tax." It's a one-time tax of 40% that heirs have to pay on the wealthy estates they inherit. Critics claim it's a form of double taxation, since those assets have already been taxed once, but the original taxes were paid by the parents; the estate tax is paid by heirs who do nothing to earn the windfall coming their way.

And under the current system, the tax doesn't even apply to the first $23.4 million of a couple's estate. In other words, the tax is only paid by a tiny sliver of the wealthiest Americans — or more accurately, the offspring of the wealthiest Americans — who then have to scrape by on just $23.4 million plus 60% of anything above that. This is no doubt traumatic for them, but it helps fund a country that provided the infrastructure, military protection and stable society in which these fortunes were built. And the tax at least somewhat blunts the cycle of ever-more-concentrated wealth that's driving America's immense wealth gap.

If anything, the income level for the estate tax should be lower — indeed, President Joe Biden has talked of lowering it from $23.4 million to its Obama-era level of $7 million, which would still hit only the very rich.

But Biden is also entertaining an unwise tax change that would make it harder for non-wealthy parents to pass on to their kids the equity in their homes, often the only asset of any real value they have. Currently, if those heirs sell the home they've inherited, their capital gains tax from the sale is calculated based on how much the home's value has risen since the parents died. The proposed change would calculate the gain based on the home's value when the parents first bought it, often a much lower number.

It's a complicated issue with the simple downside of potentially a much higher tax bill for the heirs — conceivably high enough to render a modest inheritance financially meaningless. That would deny struggling families the ability to keep what little wealth they have in the family. It truly would be a "death tax," and Democrats shouldn't saddle regular Americans with it.

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