The “Death Tax”: Why Alabama Families Should Pay Attention to Senate Bill 107
How Wilkie Sherard Frieson’s Letter to the Alabama Board of Funeral Service Exposes the Human Cost of Regulatory Fees on Funeral Homes and Grieving Families
When most people hear the words “funeral regulation,” they may assume the subject is distant, technical, or only important to funeral home owners.
But that assumption would be wrong.
What happens inside the Alabama funeral service regulatory system does not stay inside the regulatory system. It reaches grieving mothers. It reaches widows. It reaches children trying to bury a parent. It reaches churches, communities, insurance policyholders, family-owned funeral homes, and especially the Black families and Black-owned funeral businesses that have carried the sacred responsibility of death care for generations.
That is why Wilkie Sherard Frieson’s recent letter to the Alabama Board of Funeral Service deserves public attention.
Read Sherard Frieson’s Letter to the Alabama Board of Funeral Service
(click download below)
In his letter, Frieson opposes Senate Bill 107, which he pointedly names “The Death Tax.” That phrase may sound strong, but after examining the issue through his eyes — as a third-generation mortician, licensed funeral director, embalmer, and member of a family-owned funeral business that has operated for nearly six decades — the phrase becomes more than rhetoric.
It becomes a warning.
Because this is not just about a fee.
It is about who pays, who benefits, who absorbs the burden, and why families already facing one of the hardest days of their lives may be asked to carry one more government-imposed cost at the very moment they are least able to resist it.
The Public Needs to Understand What Is Being Proposed
According to public summaries of Senate Bill 107, the Alabama Board of Funeral Service would be authorized to impose an administrative fee on funeral establishments for each funeral arranged. The bill also involves increases in other fees connected to funeral establishment authority, branch registration, transfers, preneed activity, and preneed sales agents.
On paper, this may appear to be a routine regulatory matter.
In reality, it is much more.
Every new cost placed on funeral homes eventually has to go somewhere. A funeral home cannot simply pretend the cost does not exist. It must be absorbed by the business, passed along to consumers, or both.
That means a so-called administrative fee imposed on funeral establishments can quickly become a real-world burden on grieving families.
That is the heart of Sherard’s argument.
He is not simply saying, “Do not charge funeral directors more money.” He is saying the public needs to understand that funeral homes are not operating in a vacuum. They serve families whose wages have not kept up with inflation, whose insurance policies often fall short, and whose burial funds are frequently stretched thin before a funeral arrangement ever begins.
In plain language: when the state raises the cost of death care, families feel it.
Funeral Homes Are Private Businesses Performing a Public Service
One of the strongest points in Sherard’s letter is his reminder that funeral homes function as privately funded public service providers.
That phrase matters.
When a death occurs, someone must respond. Someone must remove the remains. Someone must care for the body. Someone must prepare documents. Someone must meet with the family. Someone must coordinate disposition. Someone must work with cemeteries, churches, ministers, newspapers, insurance companies, florists, vault companies, crematories, medical facilities, clergy, musicians, and public officials.
Death care is not optional.
Families may choose different levels of service, but the basic duty of caring for the dead remains necessary in every community.
Yet funeral homes, unlike many public agencies, do not receive broad public funding to carry out this essential role. They must pay staff, maintain facilities, insure vehicles, purchase supplies, cover utilities, comply with regulations, maintain licenses, and still serve families who may not have the money to pay the full cost of services.
This is especially true in rural Alabama and in Black communities where family-owned funeral homes have historically served people regardless of wealth, social status, or political power.
That is why new regulatory fees cannot be casually dismissed as “just the cost of doing business.”
In funeral service, the cost of doing business often becomes the cost of burying someone’s mother.
The Numbers Tell a Larger Story
Sherard’s letter lays out a painful economic comparison.
He recalls that when he became licensed in Alabama in 1999, his funeral director and embalmer licenses cost $50 each, for a total of $100. Years later, those same professional licenses have risen dramatically.
He also points out that funeral costs, business expenses, caskets, embalming supplies, and regulatory fees have all increased over time. Meanwhile, Alabama families — particularly Black Alabama families — have not seen their wages rise at the same pace.
This is where the public needs to pause.
The funeral industry is often criticized for being expensive. And yes, funerals are expensive. But the public also needs to understand why costs rise. It is not only because funeral homes decide to charge more. It is because nearly everything connected to funeral service costs more: supplies, transportation, insurance, compliance, staffing, licensing, facilities, utilities, and now potentially additional administrative fees.
When the Board’s fees rise faster than family income, something has to break.
Either funeral homes become less financially stable, or families pay more, or both.
For Black-owned funeral homes, the pressure is even more serious. Many of these businesses serve communities with lower household income, limited insurance coverage, and families who often need flexibility, patience, and compassion when arranging services.
A large corporate funeral provider may be able to absorb or distribute regulatory increases across many locations. But a small family-owned funeral home in a rural Black community may not have that luxury.
That is how a “small fee” can become part of a larger pattern of economic pressure that pushes independent funeral homes closer to the edge.
Why Sherard Calls It a “Death Tax”
Sherard calls SB107 a “Death Tax” because he believes it functions like a tax on bereavement.
That is a serious charge.
His argument is that if the fee is imposed on each funeral arranged, then it attaches itself to death itself. A family suffers a loss. A funeral home serves that family. Then another government-required charge is added into the economics of that arrangement.
Whether the fee is technically labeled a tax, assessment, administrative charge, or regulatory fee, the practical result may be the same for families: death becomes more expensive.
And this is where language matters.
Government often uses soft language to describe hard burdens. A “fee” sounds harmless. An “administrative charge” sounds routine. A “regulatory mechanism” sounds technical.
But to a grieving family sitting across from a funeral director, trying to bury someone with dignity, every added dollar matters.
That is why Sherard’s phrase cuts through the fog.
“The Death Tax” forces the public to ask: why should bereaved families be used as a revenue source?
Who Benefits?
Sherard asks a direct question in his letter: what does the Board need with all this money?
That question deserves an answer.
If the justification is that additional funds are needed for investigations, oversight, and regulatory enforcement, then the public has a right to ask how many complaints actually occur, how often enforcement is needed, and whether the scale of the proposed revenue increase is proportionate to the actual problem.
Regulation has a legitimate purpose. Families should be protected from negligence, fraud, misconduct, and abuse. No serious funeral professional would argue otherwise.
But regulation should be fair, transparent, proportionate, and publicly accountable.
If nearly every bereaved family is indirectly paying into a system that only a tiny fraction will ever use, then the public deserves to know whether the system is solving a real problem or simply expanding the budget of a regulatory agency.
Oversight is necessary.
But unchecked fee expansion is not the same thing as protection.
Why Black Funeral Home Owners Should Be Especially Concerned
The impact on Black funeral home owners cannot be separated from the broader history of economic exclusion.
Black funeral homes have never been just businesses. In many communities, they have been institutions of dignity, resistance, stability, and service.
During times when Black families were denied equal treatment in hospitals, cemeteries, insurance systems, public accommodations, and white-owned businesses, Black funeral homes stepped forward to care for their own people. They buried teachers, farmers, veterans, ministers, children, civil rights workers, mothers, fathers, and elders. They helped families navigate grief when few other institutions showed equal respect.
These businesses were built under conditions that were never equal.
And now, many are trying to survive under modern economic pressures that still are not equal.
Additional fees and regulatory costs may appear neutral on paper, but they do not land equally in real life. A fee imposed across the board may be felt very differently by a large corporate provider than by a small Black-owned funeral home serving families in one of Alabama’s poorer regions.
That is the part the public must understand.
Economic policy can discriminate in effect even when it does not announce discrimination in language.
A rule does not have to mention race to harm Black businesses disproportionately.
Families Will Feel This Too
This issue is not only about funeral home owners.
It is about the families they serve.
When fees increase, funeral homes face difficult choices. They can absorb the cost and weaken their own business. They can raise prices and risk burdening families. Or they can reduce services, delay improvements, or operate under even greater financial stress.
None of those options benefits the public.
Families already struggle to cover funeral costs. Many rely on small burial policies, church support, family contributions, crowdfunding, or payment arrangements. Some arrive at the funeral home with almost nothing but grief and hope.
To those families, ten dollars may not sound like much to policymakers, but the problem is not simply ten dollars.
The problem is the pattern.
Ten dollars becomes twenty. Twenty becomes fifty. A “modest fee” becomes a permanent revenue stream. Once a fee is accepted, history teaches us that it rarely disappears. It grows.
Sherard makes that point clearly.
The issue is not only what the fee is today. The issue is what it opens the door to tomorrow.
The Public Must Stop Ignoring Regulatory Power
One reason laws and rules like this pass quietly is because the public does not always know where to look.
People pay attention to presidential elections, major court cases, and dramatic headlines. But many of the policies that shape daily life are created through boards, agencies, commissions, and administrative rules that most citizens never hear about until the consequences reach their pockets.
That is why Southern Justice Archive exists.
To connect the dots.
To show that injustice is not always loud. Sometimes it is buried in legislation. Sometimes it is hidden in fee schedules. Sometimes it arrives as an administrative rule. Sometimes it looks small until it lands on people who are already carrying too much.
The public must learn to ask better questions:
Who proposed this?
Who profits from it?
Who pays for it?
Who was consulted?
Who was ignored?
What communities will feel it first?
And what happens if nobody speaks up?
Sherard’s Letter Is More Than a Complaint
Wilkie Sherard Frieson’s letter is not simply a professional objection from a licensed funeral director.
It is a public warning from someone who knows the funeral industry from the inside.
He writes as a third-generation mortician. He writes as a licensed professional. He writes as someone connected to a long-standing family-owned funeral home. He writes as an African American funeral service professional serving African American families. He writes as someone who understands both the business side and the human side of death care.
That perspective matters.
Too often, the people most affected by policy are the last ones invited to explain the consequences. Sherard’s letter does what public comment is supposed to do: it places lived experience into the official record.
But the public record is not enough.
The community needs to understand it too.
This Is About Dignity
At the deepest level, this issue is about dignity.
Death is one of the most vulnerable moments in human life. Families are emotional, overwhelmed, and often financially exposed. They should not become easy targets for revenue schemes dressed up as regulation.
Funeral homes should be accountable. Consumers should be protected. Bad actors should be investigated. But those goals should not become an excuse to place new burdens on every grieving family in Alabama.
There must be a better way to fund oversight than attaching yet another cost to death.
There must be a better way to regulate funeral service than squeezing small family-owned businesses that are already struggling to remain viable.
There must be a better way to protect consumers than making consumers pay more.
The Bottom Line
Sherard’s warning is clear:
The so-called “Death Tax” does not simply affect funeral directors.
It affects the people.
It affects Black-owned funeral homes.
It affects rural communities.
It affects widows, children, elders, churches, and families who are already doing everything they can to bury loved ones with dignity.
This is why the public must pay attention.
Because when economic pressure is placed on funeral homes, it does not stop at the funeral home door. It follows the family into the arrangement room. It shows up on the contract. It becomes part of the burden of grief.
And in communities already carrying historic and economic hardship, one more fee is not just one more fee.
It is one more weight.
The people of Alabama deserve transparency. Funeral service professionals deserve fairness. Bereaved families deserve compassion, not quiet taxation at the moment of loss.
That is why this issue matters.
That is why Sherard’s letter matters.
And that is why the Southern Justice Archive will continue to examine the laws, rules, systems, and policies that shape Black life, Black business, and Black survival in Alabama and beyond.
The Southern Justice Archive
Presented By: Charlotte A. Clark-Frieson aka
“Wilkie Clark’s Daughter”
Documenting what happened, Preserving what matters, Protecting what must endure!