Posted on 07/24/2012 8:29:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
That's one way to increase tax revenue from the rich. If you can't get Congress to pass the Buffett Rule, why not just start taxing phantom income instead?
They want their money, even if you don't get yours.
The object under discussion is “Canyon,” a masterwork of 20th-century art created by Robert Rauschenberg that Sonnabend’s children inherited when she died in 2007.
Because the work, a sculptural combine, includes a stuffed bald eagle, a bird under federal protection, the heirs would be committing a felony if they ever tried to sell it. So their appraisers have valued the work at zero. But the IRS takes a different view. It has appraised “Canyon” at $65 million and is demanding that the owners pay $29.2 million in taxes...
While art lovers may appreciate the IRS’ aesthetic sensibilities, some estate planners, tax lawyers and collectors are alarmed at the agency’s position, arguing the case could upend the standard practice of valuing assets according to their sale in a normal market. IRS guidelines say that in figuring an item’s fair market value, taxpayers should “include any restrictions, understandings, or covenants limiting the use or disposition of the property.”
The owners inherited a cool $1 billion in art from their mother but have had to sell nearly $600 million worth to cover the federal and estate taxes. As for the eagle, they can either (a) keep it and come up with $29 million, (b) sell it and go to jail for that, (c) refuse to pay the tax and go to jail for that, or (d) accept the feds' valuation and come up with the $29 million, then donate the sculpture to charity and take a relatively small charitable deduction every year for the next … 75 years. I’m honestly curious to see if the IRS backs down now that there’s been some media attention to this or if they figure, as their boss does, that the public’s sufficiently hostile to rich people that they can play hardball here by demanding a tax on an asset that can’t legally generate income. Which way are we betting? Let me know in the comments!
The federal government has mutated into a grotesque spoiled child that sits on a huge pile of candy while pointing at another child holding a small candy bar while screaming “you’re greedy, you have to share!”
At least that’s what I think of when I see Nancy Pelosi.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin:
Accuse others of what you do.
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
John Maynard Keynes:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. . . . (It) does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. . .
Keep in mind that when the government passed the income tax, they said it would only be levied on “the Rich” and would not exceed 3%.
Then the media wonders why sensible citizens don’t believe anything the government tells them.
“Ugly as a mud fence!”
Definitely a donation. That thing looks worse than the junk that school families would donate to our annual charity auction when cleaning out their garages and basements.
Does that include feathers? because we find them all the time near our cabin.
Yes, it does. Just another indicator of the malevolent insanity in which we're living.
The other thing to consider is this: What would happen if the IRS accepted the $0 estimated value, then the Federal law changed a week from now so that the piece could legally be bought, sold and transported? Hmmm ...
Abolish the S.O.B,s
Option F (from my last post): Set it on fire and collect an insurance settlement based on the IRS value.
But the insurance company would not give it a value.
Meh, I’d just deny it survived his death and hide it somewhere.
Let the IRS prove it still exists.
IIRC, there's an exception for Native Americans. The family / estate should sell it to Elizabeth Warren.
Is there any way that the inheritors could refuse to accept the eagle? If possessing eagle parts is illegal, one would think that this item should be refused by the inheritors. Perhaps it could remain with the deceased’s estate and then be confiscated by the government.
I think you must be an active practicing member of a recognized tribe.
If the art collection is insured, I can guarantee you the insurance company did some kind of appraisal of their own before setting the premiums.
It all depends. If they are Demoncrats and submit a very large contribution to the Obeyme super pac, then their troubles will abate. If they are R’s, then they can expect the hungry pigs treatment like in Hannibal.
Simple, really.
That’s just crazy!
I would also call a Gov or Senator for backing in this case. That kind of money
would and could unseat a politician.
All that for such a grotesque ‘sculpture’. If the IRS says it’s worth umpty-bajillion, perhaps they just just give it to the federal government, c/o IRS, in lieu of other payments and demand a receipt.
If IVORY which is older can be possessed, why cannot this artwork be in the same category? A person cannot possess ivory which is more current.
How old is this piece of artwork??
When was the law about the eagles passed??
Something doesn’t add up here.
Years ago a somewhat local lady got nabbed by the feds after presenting to Hillary a “dream catcher” that apparently contained an eagle feather.
From Snopes: “Peg Bargon, 39, of Monticello, Illinois, plead guilty in federal court last summer to four misdemeanor violations of the Lacey Act and Bald Eagle Protection Acts. As part of the plea agreement, the government agreed to dismiss two additional counts that alleged another violation of the Eagle Act and an MBTA violation. Bargon’s presentation of a dreamcatcher which included feathers from a bald eagle, goshawk, barred owl, and a snowy owl to Mrs. Clinton during the latter’s appearance at the University of Illinois in 1994 resulted in heightened media interest in the case. Clinton turned over the dreamcatcher to FWS when she was initially contacted.”
More detail here: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-10-27/news/0010270199_1_pardon-convicted-hillary-rodham-clinton
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