One problem is the Congress has shown that it loves retroactive taxes, so even if you schedule your death for 2010 for tax purposes, Congress may retroactively change the law to do some grave robbing this year.
Hey, you pay your money and you take your chances. You might get lucky and Congress won't get around to making the death tax retroactive. We're already four months into the year. I thought surely Congress would change the law before 2010 started. And you know that there is some multi-million-dollar estate out there that will litigate if Congress tries to make it retroactive to 01/01/10.
We should contact the zero-population-growth people and get them going on this. Since taxing something makes it rarer, the higher the death tax rate is the harder people are going to try to extend their lives in order to avoid paying taxes. Therefore the death tax is anti-ZPG. /humor