Even Secretariat Understood the Death Tax’s Cruelty (Taxing the bereaved produces little revenue)

National Review ^ | 11/15/2010 | Deroy Murdock

[Moonman62]

Some argue that America needs the death tax in order to prevent the serious cash of wealthy dead people from converting their heirs into aristocratic layabouts.

We would be better served by a law that prevents politicians and their heirs from becoming drunken, drug addled, aristocratic layabouts

[WebFocus]

RE: My proposal is that there should be no taxing of estates of less than $10 million

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And where on earth did you pick the $10 Million number ? What makes the $10 Million so special that estates above that suddenly have portions of it belonging to government bureaucrats?

This does not sound any different from Obama’s wanting to increase taxes for the “rich” ( in his case he picks the $250,000 number ).

[GregoryFul]

One of the interesting things is that capital assets pass without taxation, except for the death tax. Big capital gains can escape taxation for generations (a Roth IRA), and the basis is stepped up to the date of death.

Perhaps rather than no tax, a capital gains tax applied as though the deceased had sold on the day of death, reported on the final tax return.

[BenKenobi]

Marxists invariably hate the concept of passing one’s wealth onto your family.

[muawiyah]

It's a simple arithmetic computation. If the estate is going to be distributed among 500 closest (living) relatives and it's tax free to each up to $10,000,000, that'd be an estate of $5,000,000,000 ~ in aggregate ~and not a penny of it taxed unless it exceeds that amount.

I think it's much better to do this than have the super-rich imbed themselves in reality far beyond their alloted lifespans. Life is for the living, not ill-conceived special interest foundations and trusts.