Death & Taxes (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Death & Taxes

DEATH & TAXES (2024)

Featuring James Bandler, Jimmy Berman, Chuck Collins, Clive Davis, Matthew Desmond, Beverly Eidreich, Anand Giridharadas, Darrick Hamilton, Amy Hanauer, Yvonne Johnson, Paul Krugman, Frank Luntz, Stephen Moore, Maria Mostago, Grover Norquist, Anne Price, Alissa Quart, Robert Reich, Joy Schein, Mark Schein, David Stockman, Felicia Wong, Eden Wurmfeld and archival footage of Harvey Schein.

Narrated by Justin Schein.

Written by Purcell Carson, Robert Edwards, Brian Redondo and Justin Schein.

Directed by Justin Schein and Robert Edwards.

Distributed by Shadowbox Films. 86 minutes. Not Rated.

It is a sobering time to watch Justin Schein’s Death & Taxes, hot on the heels of Donald Trump and the Republican legislature forcing through the horrific “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which targets insane tax savings for the few richest people in America while completely screwing over the poor and middle class.

However, filmmaker Schein has decided to look at the issue greatly through the prism of his own experience, specifically the story of his father Harvey Schein. This documentary starts off with some home video footage of the family around the dining room table, with Harvey giving his ideas on estate planning.  

“That’s my dad, holding forth on his favorite subject – keeping his hard-earned money from the tax man when he dies. It’s not a bad problem to have, as long as you don’t let it drive you crazy,” Schein says in voiceover. “But unfortunately, it did.”

Actually, there is not all that much craziness on display in much of the footage of Schein’s late father Harvey. He was a self-made man and an example of the American dream (he went from childhood poverty to become the head of Sony Music and head a few other record labels) who does seem in many ways to be very loving and caring about his family, however he has the massive blind spot of being rather obsessive about taxes. Literally, nearly every conversation shown here in archival home video footage has Harvey discussing taxes and his wealth.

Joy Schein – Harvey’s wife and Justin’s mother – even suggests here that Harvey was rather left-leaning until his preoccupation with the estate tax made him take a hard turn to the right. (Justin also suggests, but doesn’t totally quite come out and say it, that Harvey was indoctrinated to this world by such conservative sources as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.)

It gets to the point where Harvey was fully willing to risk his marriage, and his family relationships and change his complete lifestyle just for tax breaks.

Strangely, for a man who made his fortune in the arts – specifically the music business – Harvey Schein appeared to have very little understanding or appreciation for the artistic mind-set, which seemed to be an ongoing point of contention in his relationship with his film-maker son and his former-dancer wife.

Schein makes his family a focal point, a specific example and a jumping-off point for this much larger problem. Harvey Schein is a living, breathing embodiment of the whole mindset which made something like “the big, beautiful bill” a reality in all of our lives. He was not a bad man, per se, but he had a very insulated view of the world. It’s like the old Libertarian playbook – I’ve got mine, so fuck you.

It’s not even that Harvey Schein was horribly excessive man in his lifestyle. However, he wants to care for his family, which is admirable in its way, but he takes it to an extreme. He forgets that taxes pay for much of the social safety net, and that other people’s taxes helped him to become the man he became – very specifically, because he went to college for free on the GI bill, which gave him all of the opportunities that he later enjoyed.

Tucked in with Schein’s family drama is more specific fare on taxes – their history, their uses, their issues. Numerous professors and economists hold forth on the subject.

Schein allows people from both sides to address the arguments on estate taxes. From the left, there is former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, economics professor and journalist Paul Krugman and journalist Anand Giridharadas. Preaching the “death tax” side are political operative and infamous tax foe Grover Nordquist, Republican consultant and pollster Frank Luntz and economist and professional talking head Stephen Moore. (And, honestly, is there a person in the world with a more punchable face than Stephen Moore?)

However, the true throughline of this film is the specifics of how tax-obsession nearly destroyed an American family.

Early on in the film, Justin Schein’s wife acknowledges that making a film like this will be tricky because it could come off as “poor little rich white boy story.” And she is not completely wrong; Justin Schein’s ability to take on a notoriously low-paying profession like documentary filmmaking was undoubtedly supported by his late father’s wealth. Many people who are affected by poverty and taxes will feel it significantly more deeply than this particular filmmaker.

However, this is Schein’s story, and it is a compelling one.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: July 15, 2025.