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Actually three cases about whether property owned by husband and wife as tenants by the entirety may
be included, without contravening the Constitution, in the gross estate of the decedent spouse for the
purpose of computing the tax ‘upon the transfer of the net estate’ imposed by existing revenue acts.
The Supreme Court stated, “Death duties rest upon the principle that death is the ‘generating
source’ from which the authority to impose such taxes takes its being and ‘it is the power to
transmit or the transmission or receipt of property by death which is the subject levied upon by all
death duties.’…But mere names and definitions, however important as aids to understanding, do not
conclude the lawmaker, who is free to ignore them and adopt his own… A tax laid upon the happening
of an event, as distinguished from its tangible fruits, is an indirect tax which Congress, in
respect of some events not necessary now to be described more definitely, undoubtedly may impose. If the
event is death and the result which is made the occasion of the tax is the bringing into being or the
enlargement of property rights, and Congress chooses to treat the tax imposed upon that result as a
death duty, although, strictly, in the absence of an expression of the legislative will, it might not
thus be denominated, there is nothing in the Constitution which stands in the way.”
Full Text: Tyler v. United States,
281 U.S. 497 (1930) |