Mark Gaffney expresses concern in his column, "Raise taxes on rich, business," (May 18), about "our broken tax system," but fails to recognize that the Federal estate tax is a prime example of the system's brokenness.

Furthermore, Gaffney's suggestion that increasing this tax will help fix Michigan's budget deficits couldn't be more wrong.

Far from restoring equity to the tax system, the estate tax actually socks it to the small guy. Family-owned and small businesses are particularly vulnerable to the estate tax. Heavy estate tax liabilities too often forces businesses to lay off workers or even shutter their doors or sell the business.

A report by Duquesne University's Antony Davies found that for every 4.5 percentage point increase in the tax per decedent (the average annual increase since 1993), an additional 6,000 small firms are eliminated or absorbed by large firms each year.

When small businesses shrink, so do jobs and tax receipts. Davies calculates that for every $1 increase in estate tax revenues, state and local governments lose almost $3 in non-estate tax revenues.

Conversely, eliminating the tax would generate $80 billion in labor income and increase payroll tax revenues by more than $20 billion annually ($9.3 billion at the state and local level). It would create 100,000 businesses and 2 million jobs.

It is time to fix the broken tax system, and one of the best ways to start is by scrapping the estate tax. Michigan's budget would only benefit.

Dick Patten, president, American Family Business Institute, Washington, D.C.

Read the original article in The Detroit News here