Cite as: 520 U. S. 93 (1997)
Scalia, J., dissenting
and the concurrence also properly acknowledge that if residuary principal is used to pay administration expenses, then the marital deduction must be reduced commensurately because the property does not pass to the spouse. See ante, at 104 (plurality opinion); ante, at 112-113 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); 26 U. S. C. § 2056(a). The plurality and the concurrence decline, however, to follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion. Since the future stream of income is one part of the value of the assets at the date of death, use of the income to pay administration expenses (which were not included in calculating the assets' values) in effect reduces the value of the interest that passes to the spouse. As succinctly explained by a respected tax commentator:
"Beneficiaries are compensated for the delay in receiving possession by giving them the right to the income that is earned during administration. . . . [I]t is only the combination of the two rights—that to the income and that to possess the property in the future—that gives the beneficiary rights at death that are equal to value of the property at death. If the beneficiary does not get the income, what the beneficiary gets is less than the deathtime value of the property." Davenport, A Street Through Hubert's Fog, 73 Tax Notes 1107, 1110 (1996).
If the beneficiary does not receive the income generated by the marital bequest principal, she in effect receives at the date of death less than the value of the property in the estate, in much the same way as she receives less than the value of the property in the estate when principal is used to pay expenses.
II
Besides giving the word "material" the erroneous meaning of something in excess of "substantial," the plurality's opinion adopts a unique methodology for determining materiality. Consistent with its apparent view that the estate tax provisions prohibit examination of any events following the
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