States continue to drop the death tax

From the weekend Wall Street Journal, (subscription may be needed), Ohio has joined the majority of states in abolishing its death tax.  Indiana is phasing them out over the next 8 years. The reason is that state death taxes don't collect much revenue, but they do drive residents to go die in another state without the tax.  The article has the statistics.

Tennessee still has both an estate and gift tax (as does Connecticut).  This caught my eye:

Because wealthy people avoiding the estate tax take their businesses and spending with them, the study concludes that "had Tennessee eliminated its gift and estate tax 10 years ago, Tennessee's economy would have been over 14% larger in 2010." They also find the estate tax cost Tennessee state and local governments over $7 billion in tax collections. Could there be a more self-defeating tax?

 No, there couldn't.  The elimination of state death taxes is the consequence of converting from a federal credit for state taxes to a deduction.