If Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos were to unexpectedly die today, Washington state could expect an estate tax windfall of nearly $12 billion, raising its total annual revenue by more than 50% for a single year. That’s according to a new study on the costs and benefits of an estate tax to states from Enrico Moretti of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel J. Wilson of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. On average, they found, state coffers saw a tax revenue windfall of $165 million following the death of a Forbes 400 billionaire. The estate tax is, in practice, a wealth tax imposed on the nation’s richest ... (full story)