00                    HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 35 am                                                                    
01 Relating to urging the United States Congress to amend the tax code to permanently                                      
02 repeal the estate tax.                                                                                                  
03 BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:                                                               
04       WHEREAS, under tax relief legislation passed in 2001, the federal estate and                                    
05 generation-skipping transfer tax (the "estate tax") was temporarily repealed, not permanently                           
06 eliminated; and                                                                                                         
07       WHEREAS women and minorities very often are owners of small- and medium-sized                                   
08 businesses and have spent their lifetimes trying to make better lives for their children, and the                       
09 estate tax frequently prevents their children from reaping the rewards of those efforts; and                            
10       WHEREAS farmers who have invested most of their earnings back into their farms                                  
11 face losing those farms under the federal government's heavy taxation of estates; and                                   
12       WHEREAS employees suffer when they lose their jobs because many small- and                                      
13 medium-sized businesses are liquidated to pay estate taxes and because high capital costs                               
14 depress the number of new business that could offer them jobs; and                                                      
15       WHEREAS, if the estate tax had been repealed in 1996, over the next nine years, the                             
16 U.S. economy would have averaged as much as $11,000,000,000 a year in extra output, and                                 

01 an average of 145,000 additional new jobs a year would have been created; and                                           
02       WHEREAS the persistent uncertainty created by the sunset provision prevents                                     
03 families and small businesses from taking advantage of the repeal; and                                                  
04       WHEREAS elimination of the estate tax has proven to hold wide bipartisan support;                               
05       BE IT RESOLVED by the Alaska State Legislature that the members of the Alaska                                   
06 delegation to the Congress of the United States are requested to support, work to pass, and                             
07 vote for the permanent repeal of the estate tax.                                                                        
08       COPIES of this resolution shall be sent to the Honorable Ted Stevens and the                                    
09 Honorable Frank Murkowski, U.S. Senators, and the Honorable Don Young, U.S.                                             
10 Representative, members of the Alaska delegation in Congress.