House Democrats want more wealthy Americans to pay the estate tax.

The tax plan they released Monday would expand the tax to hit people who die with smaller estates and eliminate some of the most popular strategies advisers deploy to minimize the taxes rich Americans pay on inherited wealth.

Two decades of tax-law changes made it easier for...

House Democrats want more wealthy Americans to pay the estate tax.

The tax plan they released Monday would expand the tax to hit people who die with smaller estates and eliminate some of the most popular strategies advisers deploy to minimize the taxes rich Americans pay on inherited wealth.

Two decades of tax-law changes made it easier for rich families to avoid the estate tax when they pass wealth down from one generation to another. About 1,900 filers paid the levy in 2020, down from over 50,000 in 2001, the Tax Policy Center estimates.

The House Democrats’ plan includes changes to the estate tax to help raise the revenue needed to expand the social safety net and combat climate change. The Biden administration’s tax proposal included major increases in capital-gains taxes, including imposing taxes at death on unrealized gains, but it didn’t call for changing the estate tax.

The House plan would reverse the doubling of the estate-and-gift tax exemption that Congress created in 2017. That increase would end after 2021 instead of expiring at the end of 2025. The exclusion would likely fall to around $6 million per individual from $11.7 million. Estates surpassing that threshold, after charitable donations and other deductions, would be subject to the tax, which has a top rate of 40%.

The change could triple the number of people paying the estate tax. The Tax Policy Center previously estimated that letting the higher exemption expire at the end of 2025 would increase the number of taxable returns to 9,000. A similar bump is likely from the Democratic proposal for letting the exemption expire sooner.

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The lower exemption would raise $54 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, while other proposed estate-tax changes would raise $28 billion.

The Democrats’ proposal also limits popular techniques used to keep estates below the estate-tax threshold, including some uses of grantor trusts. Many wealthy families minimize tax bills by placing assets intended for heirs into these vehicles.

“One of the biggest tools in the estate planners’ tool kit is the grantor trust. This change effectively eliminates it as a planning tool,” said Tara Popernik, director of research at AllianceBernstein Holding LP’s private wealth unit.

The majority of the trusts that wealth manager Rockefeller Capital Management sets up for clients are grantor trusts, said Tim Laffey, head of tax policy and research at the firm. That would likely change if the Democrats’ plan takes effect, he said.

The proposal would also limit the use of large Roth IRAs by the superrich.

While the changes would subject more taxpayers to the estate tax, those affected would remain a tiny fraction of the population, said Len Burman, co-founder of the Tax Policy Center.

Few people die with enough money for the tax to kick in even at the lower exemption level. And those with large estates could still deploy other tax-planning techniques, such as charitable giving or other kinds of trusts, Mr. Laffey said.

—Richard Rubin contributed to this article.

Write to Rachel Louise Ensign at rachel.ensign@wsj.com