Posted on 05/05/2003 9:25:04 AM PDT by chambley1
Taxpayers wanted, dead or alive
Ivy Main
With the nation's anti-tax fervor at a high pitch, the time is ripe to consider tax relief for freelance newspaper columnists.
Our nation has a long tradition of writers offering their opinions cheaply to anyone who will print them, but these people are under enormous financial pressure as newspapers cut their pay rates.
Without tax relief, the American dream of becoming an obnoxious pundit will be out of reach of all but large corporate opinion writers.
Are you persuaded? If you are, I have a lot of other tax breaks I'd like to try on you. They would all have the excellent result of benefiting people who want them very much (like me), plus each of them would mean more money in the hands of the recipients (me again), who would probably spend the cash (you bet!), thereby infusing money into the economy and creating jobs.
There's only one drawback to my plan, which is that you have to pay for it. Either you must pay more in taxes yourselves, or the government will run a deficit that you will have to deal with sooner or later.
This can't be a very important drawback, though, because far bigger tax breaks are being offered to people with lots more money, with the full support of people who call themselves fiscal conservatives.
Consider the estate tax, which collects money from only the wealthiest two percent of people. And these aren't even live people. The bill arrives only after they've passed to that tax haven in the sky, where money doesn't buy much.
Yet so popular is the proposal to repeal the estate tax that many politicians have enshrined it in their platforms along with family values, apple pie, and gun rights.
Tax breaks for dead people might seem like a strange kind of populist cause, given that the estate tax only applies to dead people worth more than $2 million. Ordinary people, even those who cherish a dream of someday amassing that kind of money, might be expected to save their passion for causes a little more immediate and closer to home.
And indeed, those stumping for estate tax repeal don't mention the corporate executives, real estate developers, syndicated radio talk show hosts and other campaign supporters who will get most of the tax savings.
They dwell instead on small business owners and family farmers, whose heirs pay only a tiny fraction of the estate taxes, and who are given years to pay at below-market loan rates.
Sympathy for these people runs deep in America. The term ``family farm" triggers emotions that verge on the religious.
But even as applied to this sacred group, the argument for repealing the estate tax is a little peculiar. It says that if the heirs of the farmer or business owner have to pay a tax on the portion of the property worth more than $2 million, they might have to sell out and pocket all the money.
Without their capital fully protected, apparently these heirs can't compete against someone starting a business or a farm from scratch, with no capital at all, using money borrowed at market rates.
Those whose devotion to family farms is especially fervent, however, don't see it as a matter of protecting people who inherit property from competition by those who seek to earn it with talent and hard work.
They believe they are defending a tradition of keeping farms within families. It does not occur to them that there could be any way of doing this that didn't also eliminate taxes on the 99 percent of wealthy heirs who aren't getting farms.
You can bet that's occurred to the politicians, though, and that they prefer not to mention the option. But press them on it, and they'll still stick up for the rich, arguing that the estate tax is a form of double taxation. This is largely untrue. For the most part, the property in large estates has not been taxed already, but even if it were true, what of it?
Today, middle-income (live) taxpayers pay a capital gains tax of 20 percent, double the 10 percent a lower-income earner pays on the same gain, but that hasn't caused a revolution.
Though maybe it will, now that I've mentioned it.
The painful truth is that someone has to fund the government. If you give me the tax break I'd like (and you really should), then the lost revenue must be borrowed or made up by taxing someone else.
And personally, I know of only one category of people who can afford to pay taxes and don't find it painful at all.
Dead ones.
Way to go. You certainly gave HER something upon which to ruminate.
The bovine reference intentional as is the porcine reference, to wit "NEVER TRY TO TEACH A PIG TO SING. IT JUST WASTES YOUR TIME AND IT REALLY ANNOYS THE PIG."
I wear the badge with pride! :-))
I'm coming to you next time I need a "letter to the editor."
Well done!
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