No, you can't take it with you.
But many people want to decide who'll benefit from their estates after they are gone.
Hillary Clinton doesn't share this sentiment.
The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on her new "65 % Killer Estate Tax:"
Though she defeated Bernie Sanders in the primary, she is adopting the socialist’s death-tax rate structure. She’d tax all estates over $10 million at 50%, apply a 55% rate on estates over $50 million, and go to 65% on assets above $500 million. The 65% rate would be the highest since 1981 and is another example of how she is repudiating the more moderate policies of her husband and the Democrats of the 1990s.
The left claims only the super-wealthy will pay high rates, but the Sanders plan that Mrs. Clinton is copying did not index exemption levels for inflation. One reason a bipartisan movement emerged to reform the death tax in the 1990s was because the then 55% rate engulfed ever more taxpayers over time. Mrs. Clinton would also end the “step-up in basis” on stock valuations for many filers, triggering big capital gains taxes for a much broader population.
She also knows most of her rich friends will set up foundations, as she and Bill Clinton have, to shelter most of their riches from the estate tax. As Americans have learned, these supposed charities can be terrific vehicles for employing political operatives while they wait for Chelsea to run for the Senate.
I have a friend who is rich but not mega rich and who often complains about the ultra rich who get brownie points by opining that taxing the rich is necessary and just and add that they will not leave their children above a certain amount. They don't have to. They can set up nonprofits that will keep the kids in caviar for generations. The merely rich, meanwhile, see the really rich advocating tax policies that harm their ability to leave what they have to their children.
Mrs. Clinton must know, the editorial points out, that her plan would have no chance of passing a Republican Congress. Maybe she believes she will win and the Democrats will regain Congress, or maybe she sees this as a good opening bid for going toe to toe with Speaker Paul Ryan.
The Democrats often couch their arguments in moral terms (as in, you're scum, if you don't agree) but a moral case can be made for reducing the estate tax:
“The whole concept of a death tax is immoral,” [Rep. Warren] Davidson says, and he’s right. The tax confiscates assets that have already been taxed once or more when first earned, and it punishes a lifetime of investment and thrift. The desire to pass along assets to heirs is also a motivation for many entrepreneurs. No one we know labors to turn two-thirds of a life’s work over to politicians to spend.
Davidson was elected to fill former speaker John Boehner's seat.
Donald Trump proposes to eliminate the death tax.