You are referring to the estate tax. The term "death tax" is deliberately misleading and used as a propaganda term by those who want to repeal the estate tax.
I'm not an admirer of Luntz's work, what he does is evil. His active spreading of the "death tax" term, however, is one exception. "Inheritance tax" is better of course, but "death tax" is still better than "estate tax" in terms of conveying the actual meaning and causing less confusion than "estate tax". In any case, this discussion has served little utility (especially considering the GP's question on Jobs' inheritance tax) and I wouldn't mind someone downvoting the whole comment chain.
Do you really think that spreading the term "death tax" caused less confusion than before? Really?
It is a brilliant propaganda term because it makes people think they will have to pay when their loved ones pass away even if they own nowhere near the $5 million cutoff (as of 2011) for paying federal estate tax. In reality, these people are opposing taxes that they will never see.
Good point, you've raised some interesting meta-concerns. I guess it's an interesting philosophical question if a term and its evangelical spread that brings knowledge to more people while simultaneously confusing a subset of them is better than never having the term in the first place and leaving more people ignorant (and thus not confused). I know some people reason by literal terminology and when faced with experimental fact that a term doesn't correspond to what they think it means, they still refuse to change their mind on what they think it means. (Or the inverse of ignoring any evidence associated with a particular term because they think they apply their prior on the term alone, not what it means--my poster-child on this is global warming, every winter you'll hear the same things.)
I don't think it's that interesting that people are actively opposing things that don't affect them, even if in some cases it's fun to point and laugh.
It is definitely a brilliant piece of viral marketing. You know your right-wing propaganda is working when even the few progressive media outlets fall into saying the same things. I'm just not really in agreement with how large the subset of people confused by the term from the name alone is and I think most people confused by the term are likely confused by so many other things that it doesn't matter stressing over the one term causing confusion when the aggregate should be looked at. This may explain why I used to be a grammar nazi when I was a young teen, then realized that there are much larger problems with people's handle on English than problems like typos, their/they're, u/you, and so on. Unsolicited correction these days is mainly for trolling and "lulz". I still get deeply annoyed at the most egregious abuses of English (my pet peeve being the simple then/than), so I can see where you're coming from now. Unlike you, I have yet to run into anyone confused by death tax in such a way as you've mentioned. Of course, I think saying "No, it's not death tax, it's inheritance tax" can mislead them toward the truth in 3 seconds, while saying "No, it's not death tax, it's estate tax" doesn't. All these terms go to the same Wikipedia article.
At the very least I think most HN readers aren't confused in the ways you've highlighted, though they may be misinformed about specific facts like the amount of the cutoff. Maybe I'm wrong though and overestimating the community knowledge. If I'm right, then pointing out the potential terminology problems reduces to a more pedantic point about encouraging habits that will save you outside the community. Just because most of us are emotionally capable of handling abusive statements mixed with other comments (2+2=4 you dumbass) doesn't mean we ought to get in the habit of writing abusive comments.
Income tax taxes income, sales tax taxes sales. Death tax is not a tax on death. I have heard people equate "death tax" with "paying to die" and as support for the phrase "even death isn't free".
I suppose that technically it's a tax on the transfer of your assets after your death. But unless you have no assets at all, it's hard to die and not transfer your assets to anyone.
