Posted on 04/22/2009 9:52:26 PM PDT by rvoitier
The good news is that Congress realizes that the American people are not going to stand for a permanent 45% Death Tax.
The bad news is . . .
The Editorial Page of THEDEADPELICAN.COM
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| From Dick Patten of AFBI: The Death Tax fight is not slowing down one bit.
 Dick Patten President American Family Business Institute P.S. It is very likely that the Senate will vote on Death Tax legislation this week. Please contact your Senators today! |
Sure they are. They have for decades without a peep.
Congress needs something that will scare the living hell out of them. I don’t know what form that will take. Until then, they will continue to run roughshod over us.
The most criminal tax of all needs a permanent burial. But alas, that doesn’t look like it’ll be happening any time soon. ...or perhaps ever.
“The most criminal tax of all needs a permanent burial.”
I can’t see why it’s worse than property, sales, and income taxes, which impoverish the living. They are all bad, but to me the estate tax is the least bad of the 4.
A 35% max rate sounds about as good as we’ll get from this congress. What’s critical is to index the exemption and rates to inflation. You know there’s going to be a lot of inflation!
At the rate they’re going, there won’t be any need for a “Death Tax”. They’ll take it all while you’re still alive.
“They are all bad, but to me the estate tax is the least bad of the 4.”
Unless you want to pass on the family farm to your heirs?
Where’s Willy Nelson when you need him?
You pay taxes on income and on products and services once.
Why should the government get another crack at your money after you are dead?
It belongs to your children and your heirs. It does not belong to the state because it is not theirs.
The American Family Business Institute (AFBI) is a 501(c)(6) trade association of family business-owners and farmers....
Not that there's anything wrong with the AFBI or with being against the death tax, but the AFBI is a lobbying group. Just so you know.
>Congress needs something that will scare the living hell out of them. I don’t know what form that will take. Until then, they will continue to run roughshod over us.
I bet that a civil war would do it.
Tax collections are down about 30% for the month from last year. That is huge.
“You pay taxes on income and on products and services once.”
I don’t see why I should have to pay anything on the money I earn or spend, or just to live in my house. Why is it fair? I need the money to live, and to educate my children.
When I die I don’t care as much what happens to my estate. It’s financial fertilizer, and if it helps keep the government afloat it’s OK with me.
You folks crusading against the estate tax in particular would prefer to raise all my other taxes instead, and I am opposed.
Family farms get killed on estate taxes. My brothers and I worked like dogs for years building the family farm making it quite a success. Even with years of estate planning when my father passed the debt to the feds caused us to sell off some of it. Land based businesses are tough enough to grow. Holding them is even tougher.
There is no perfect tax, except perhaps a lottery.
If your father had paid you much better all those years you worked like a dog, you would have paid more income taxes every year, but the family farm would have been worth less for estate tax purposes. You choose your poison. And of course a married couple can gift $26000 per year tax free to each of their children every year. Personally I would favor an estate tax exemption of $10 million indexed to inflation. But then I’m a Republican, not a Democrat. $3.5 million with a 35% rate is the best you’re going to get out of this bunch.
I ain’t raising your taxes one single dime! You need to get your mind right.
“It’s financial fertilizer, and if it helps keep the government afloat it’s OK with me.”
It’s been a while since I have seen such a ridiculous statement on FR.
“You folks crusading against the estate tax in particular would prefer to raise all my other taxes instead, and I am opposed.”
Do you know what the money that you are being taxed for is being spent on?? I do! I have seen the gross incompetence and abuse of funds that we are taxed on first hand. It is abused at an exponential rate!
You should spend some of your energies going after the morons that waste your money not the “crusaders” that they are taking it from.
The money that you pay in taxes ~ ALL THE VARIOUS TAXES ~ is being wasted at a rate that should make your head spin.
“It does not belong to the state because it is not theirs.”
As of January 20, 2009, you’re wrong. All assets are now the property of The State; if you’re a good little comrade and toe the Marxist line, they just might let you keep a little to live on - but never make the mistake of believing again in the concept of private property. It’s dead, just like the Constitution.
Really? The Estate Tax goes after money that has already been subject to income tax*, and does so (at least now) at a far higher rate. It exclusively punishes lifetime thrift, and can be utterly devastating to a family-run business that operates on fairly thin margins (after paying barely reasonable, and sometimes very skimpy, salaries to family employees).
I say this as an Estate Planning lawyer who does better when the Estate Tax is higher and hits more families: it is no good for the country. It needs either permanent repeal, or at the least there needs to be a very high lifetime exemption of $10 million or $50 million.
Keep something in mind: if nothing is done, there will be no Estate Tax in 2010. However, for anyone dying on or after 1/1/2011, the lifetime exemption goes back to the 2001 level of $1 million. Many, many more people will be hit by it - and all that is required is gridlock in DC.
* Except for capital gains on assets held by the decedent at the time they die. I'd be in favor of getting rid of the Estate Tax, in exchange for subjecting these otherwise untaxed gains at long term capital gains rate on the decedent's final income tax return. However, that simply won't happen (it also happens to be an accounting nightmare, and I know this because I am also a CPA who prepared taxes for about a dozen years).
““It’s financial fertilizer, and if it helps keep the government afloat it’s OK with me.”
“It’s been a while since I have seen such a ridiculous statement on FR.”
It’s not nearly as ridiculous as trying to convince me that I will need money more once I die rather than now when I am alive.
The estate tax is a tax, and as such it is going to hurt someone. However, contrary to the rhetoric of the “anti-death-tax” zealots, the estate tax appears to me to be the least harmful of the major taxes we currently are harmed by (income, sales, property, estate ). It’s also obvious that if you lower one of these taxes to zero, the remainder will rise!
While I genuinely sympathize with your plight, I fail to understand why a lifetime of working on a farm is of greater value than working at any other job, and therefor I see no difference between taxing the lifetime accumulations of either a farmer, a factory worker or a doctor - it is wrong in all cases. Yes, some businesses are not liquid (like farms), and there needs to be a provision allowing the Estate Tax to be paid off gradually (oh, wait, there IS such a provision - so farmers and others with estates highly concentrated in one asset already get a break that someone with a large portfolio of stocks, bonds and mutual funds doesn't get).
Sorry, no one deserves a special break. We ALL need to fight the Estate Tax. We need to hang together, or surely we will all hang together.
“They are all bad, but to me the estate tax is the least bad of the 4.”
“Really?”
Really!
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