Small-business owners, at the heart of the estate tax battle, have plenty of ideas about what Congress should do now that efforts to permanently repeal the tax appear dead.

Keep the tax, owners say, but raise the dollar amounts that are exempt. Try for repeal again later this year. Or, at the other extreme: Preserve the tax and raise the rates while slashing other taxes.

The U.S. Senate last week fell three votes short of acting on a Republican bill, approved by the House last year, that would have permanently repealed the tax on inherited wealth. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., predicted another vote this year on what opponents call the "death tax."

The National Federation of Independent Business, a leading small-business trade group, has led the attack on the tax. It cites NFIB surveys showing support for repeal among its 600,000 members.

The group says untold numbers of small businesses and family farms spend millions on tax advice or are forced out of business because heirs don't have the cash to pay the levy.

Government data contradict that claim. As few as 485 small businesses were subject to the tax in 2000, a Congressional Budget Office study of IRS data found last year. Of those, 164 didn't have enough cash to pay the tax, presumably forcing heirs to sell some or all of those companies. That's a fraction of the United States' nearly 6 million small employers and nearly 18 million ventures without employees.

The tax applies this year to estates valued at more than $2 million — $4 million for couples — under 2001 legislation signed by President Bush. The top rate is 46 percent on every dollar over those exempt amounts. The exempt amounts will continue to rise, and the rates fall, until 2010, when the tax is repealed for one year. It will return in 2011 unless Congress acts.