President Trump on Wednesday released what The New York Times called a “tax cut blueprint” (more on this phrasing a bit later), the main element being large cuts for corporations. Also included in the blueprint was the repeal of what The Times referred to as either an “inheritance tax” or an “estate tax.” Republicans sometimes call it a “death tax.” (We brought up the issue of using that last term in an earlier mailbag.)

Several readers noticed the inconsistent usage and wrote to point it out.

Please stop the NYT writers from telling us Trump proposes we eliminate the “inheritance tax.” That mislabeling appeared prominently in both the NYT lead articles about Trump’s latest tax-change proposal. That is wrong and terribly irresponsible and deceptive. It reinforces misunderstanding that helps increase our terrible economic-inequality problem. We do not have an “inheritance tax.” Instead we have an estate tax, on the wealth of the corpse. We should instead have an inheritance tax, to be paid by the recipient of an inheritance. And it should be at rates at least as high as those applied to somebody who gains the same amount by actually earning it.

Dick Purcell, Leadville, Colo.

We asked Alan Rappeport, an economic policy reporter who covered the tax cut blueprint, whether he could clarify which term is correct:

They are often used interchangeably and the Trump proposal actually called for a repeal of the “death tax,” which usually refers to the estate tax. We should probably stick with estate tax going forward. Here is the I.R.S. explanation of the difference: Estate tax is a tax that is based on the net value of the property owned by the deceased. When the assets are transferred to the beneficiary, estate tax comes into play. This tax has nothing to do with the person who inherits the assets. Inheritance tax, on the other hand, is imposed by state governments and the tax rate depends on the person receiving the property, and in some jurisdictions, how much they receive.

The public editor’s take: I’m no expert in tax law but it does seem as if an estate tax and an inheritance tax are two different things. Glad to have clarity.

What to call Trump’s tax cut proposal was a question this week for Times journalists, because, as one Times story noted, the proposal was not so much a plan as “a wish list” — a “skeletal outline of a tax package” presented in the form of a single page of bullet points. The Times did, though, call the outline a plan at times, which Rappeport attributed to a shortage of ways to describe it. Still, readers and a Times reporter on Twitter, poked fun at the word choice.