With estate tax rates starting where they do, most Americans, even the most workaholic, will not be able to leave a house to each of their children and a college education to each of their grandchildren without being savaged by estate taxes.
Is that too much to ask after a lifetime of working yourself to death?
Yet, here is Warren Buffett who, even if he paid estate taxes and gave away 80% of his wealth would still be able to leave each of his kids hundreds of millions of dollars and that man still sickeningly pontificates about "not giving incredible head starts to certain people who were very selective about the womb from which they emerged".
In the mean time, people such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are building multi-billion ego monuments to themselves by creating their foundations ESTATE TAX FREE.
In our town, we have a Carnegie Library still boosting Carnegie's ego over a century after he died. Carnegie, however, gave his gift when there was no estate tax.
Warren Buffet's attitude concerning the average American workaholic who kills himself to leave his children and grandchildren a $4 million estate to be divided between then for college educations and help in purchasing their first homes is no more revolting than Marie Antoinette's dismissive, "Let them eat cake."
If Warren Buffett gave a rat's rectum about the average American, he would at least be advocating raising the minimum threshold for estate taxes instead of advocating that no change should be made.
i'm with you 101%.
"that man still sickeningly pontificates about "not giving incredible head starts to certain people who were very selective about the womb from which they emerged".
I don't think either Buffett or Gates exactly came from impoverished backgrounds, either.
Gates lucked out by snaring IBM with his buggy, inferior OS, then copied Apple's Mac OS, and has coasted ever since. IBM has since wised up and run from Windows as fast as they can. Buffett has specialized in investing in cash cows created by someone else, and protected by government. He's probably closer to a Soros type than to a real entrepreneur.
Well, a million bucks isn't what it used to be. Seems to me the easy fix is to raise the exemption limit from it's current level to something more in line with modern times. Make the estate tax exempt up to 10 million.
I would make all trusts subject to the same estate tax as money not in a trust.
Then the families of Gates, Buffet, Heinz ect. would complain, but even more the armies of accountants and trust lawyers who are the people who truly benefit from the current estate tax law.