Free Republic

What are the tax implications of the zombie apocalypse? The only certainties in life are death and taxes, but how do you handle the taxes when death doesn't go quite as planned? Law professor Adam Chodorow takes a stab at estate planning for the undead in perhaps the only legal paper to cite both the Internal Revenue Code and Weekend at Bernie's II. Chodorow, a professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, authored the paper "Death and Taxes...and Zombies," which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Iowa Law Review. Chodorow notes that, while the...

When Steve Jobs died last month, he left $6.78 billion of stock in both Apple and Disney presumably to his wife and family. His widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, may not have a better time to sell off the billions of stock and avoid $867 million in capital gains taxes. Financial planners told Bloomberg that Powell Jobs and the family should quickly divest and diversify its holdings to avoid higher taxes. Capital gains taxes are set to rise in 2013 from 15 to 20 percent, and Americans with a high income may also be subjected to a 3.8 percent tax on...

Sometimes I just can't help pitying rich folks. Lately it's because the new tax law gives them yet another high-class quandary: Should they rush to give away everything to their kids during the next two years in order to save future estate tax? That's precisely what some financial pundits are now suggesting they do. Their advice grows out of the estate tax overhaul President Obama signed in December. It raises the tax-free limit on lifetime gifts from $1 million to a hefty $5 million ($10 million for married couples) before a gift tax applies. When it does, the rate is...

The Wall Street Journal has brought up yet another argument against the ebb and flow of the estate tax debate this week. The crux of it is that the uncertainty over how large the government vultures will be when they come to feast on your corpse has some business owners spending more preparing for the estate tax than their families will eventually lose. What’s unavoidable to many family businesses, however, is the cost of lawyers, accountants, family business advisers and business appraisers—and all that, owners say, has increased in the past decade as the estate-tax rate has continually changed. Trade...

A top House Democrat said Monday there's room to revise the contentious tax-cut package hammered out between the White House and Senate Republicans. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) predicted the House would ultimately pass a tax-cut bill this month, but not before Democratic critics have had a chance to amend certain language — particularly a 35 percent estate tax provision that exempts the first $5 million of estates. "There certainly seems to me to be some room for a change which may or may not be perceived by some to be significant," Hoyer told reporters at the National Press Club....

The assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that President Obama's tax compromise with Republicans will come to the House floor, despite House Democrats vowing to block the deal in a heated caucus meeting last week. But Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on "Fox News Sunday" that, even though the White House has said that the deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts isn't open to negotiation, House Democrats are still going to make an effort to lop out at least one controversial provision: the estate tax. "This bill will come to the floor of the House in...

House Democratic leaders unhappy with the tax-cut deal President Obama struck with Republicans are signaling they will try to draw the line at a GOP-favored proposal for the estate tax. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday escalated the Democratic criticism of the agreement and said the estate-tax provision was “a bridge too far.” The comments by Pelosi and other party leaders reflected widespread anger among House Democrats at the president for caving too early, by their characterization, and essentially leaving them out of final negotiations with Republicans. While Pelosi retains the Speaker’s gavel for nearly another month, the tax-cut endgame...

I know that we are all supposed to love Warren Buffett as the Sage of Omaha, businessman and all-around good guy, but I keep reading stories that make me wonder. Here's a story about Warren Buffett, the estate tax, and the life insurance industry. Did you know that the life insurance lobby is actively lobbying to restore the estate tax?  Why would the life insurance industry care about that? It turns out that ten percent of life insurance industry revenue is related to the estate tax. Wealthy people take out life insurance in order to reduce estate taxes because...

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday all but promised to filibuster President Barack Obama’s controversial agreement with Republicans to extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts for two years. Appearing on "The Ed Schultz Show" on MSNBC, the Vermont Independent lambasted the agreement, which also includes a 13-month extension of unemployment insurance, a two-year exemption from the estate tax for estates worth up to $5 million and a host of provisions from last year’s stimulus bill. “I think it is an absolute disaster and an insult to the vast majority of the American people,” Sanders told Schultz, adding that Democrats opposed...

Director Randall Wallace’s Secretariat is a well-acted, exciting, and beautifully shot 1970s period piece about the Babe Ruth of thoroughbreds. It also dramatizes the immorality of the death tax. During a contentious scene in a generally upbeat movie, Penny Chenery Tweedy (the outstanding Diane Lane), her husband Jack (Dylan Walsh), and her brother Hollis (Dylan Baker) convene soon after the family patriarch loses his lengthy fight against Alzheimer’s. Even before they can organize his funeral, the three loved ones replace grief with acrimony as they contemplate an impending $6 million federal death-tax liability (equal to $29.5 million today). They must...

Anti-poverty advocates, business groups and unions all realize it’s now or never for Congress to move on restoring the estate tax. With the August recess looming, both sides of the debate are calling on lawmakers to act now on the tax. Lawmakers will return to Capitol Hill in the fall, hesitant to take a potentially toxic vote so close to the midterm elections on what could be termed a tax increase. The estate tax — which has lapsed since the beginning of the year — will return in 2011. It will be at its highest rate in 10 years, with...

The old expression was "What would you do if you had six months to live?" This year, it's "What would you do if you had six months to die?" The clock is ticking on free death in America. Last week we saw an amazing example of a good news/sad news scenario. George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, died of a heart attack at age 80. But by dying in 2010, his family avoided $500 million in estate taxes that it would have paid if he'd hung on another year. Why? Because the inheritance tax is in exile this year. The...

Whether you admired George Steinbrenner or loathed him (his kind treatment of troubled souls like Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden won me over in his later years), say this for the man: He had impeccable timing. When Steinbrenner led a group of partners that bought the New York Yankees in 1973 for $10 million, the team was down on its luck and owned by a corporate parent, CBS, that had no idea what to do about it. When he died yesterday at age 80, he had built his own network, YES, into the cornerstone of a personal fortune estimated at...

Two senators, a Democrat and a Republican, have reintroduced a proposal to reinstate the estate tax, which lapsed this year amid a row among lawmakers over taxing the wealthy when they die. Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln and Republican Senator Jon Kyl late on Tuesday reintroduced a plan to tax estates over $5 million at a rate of 35 percent. The estate tax that expired last year had taxed estates at a rate of 45 percent, above an exemption of $3.5 million for individuals and above $7 million for couples. There is no estate tax in 2010 because lawmakers last year...

Repeal of the estate tax imposes significant costs on the taxpaying public and promotes concentrations of wealth that harm our democracy. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST

The most immoral of all taxes is the Death Tax. The Death Tax replaces the government as primary beneficiary, in-front of children, family, friends, and charities...

The federal death tax today stands at zero percent, and it should stay there. Republicans and free-marketeers should kill the death tax once and for all before it roars back next January 1. If the Democratic Left defends the death tax, the Republican Right should beat them on it at the polls next November. If Congress does nothing, the death tax will be resurrected at 55 percent after a $1 million exclusion. According to the Wall Street Journal, Democrats wish to restore last year’s 45 percent death tax beyond a $3.5 million exclusion. Republicans seem to prefer a 35 percent...

Do not be fooled by the estate tax lapse of 2010. It is true that the estate tax--which imposed a 45% tax on all assets in excess of $3.5 million--was repealed for 2010 as part of the sweeping Bush tax cuts of 2001. But it is unlikely your estate will get a free pass. For one thing the repeal is only in place for one year. In 2011 the estate tax is slated to be reinstated with a higher rate of 55% and an exemption of only $1 million per estate. Also even though the federal estate tax is (as...

As the Vermont legislature struggles to find $150 million worth of budget cuts this year, an attempt to roll back two tax increases is running into opposition. At issue are the capital gains and estate taxes, primarily affecting upper income Vermonters. But there's evidence that the two taxes are driving wealthier residents out of state to places like Florida. The Vermont senate Economic Development committee met at Burlington city hall last week to hear testimony on repealing last year's increases on the state capital gains tax and the estate tax. Although farms were excluded from the death tax -- as...

Fiscal Policy: The new year saw the death of the estate tax. But like Freddie Krueger, this epitome of class warfare and wealth redistribution is sure to return to wreak havoc among the living. Once dubbed the "Paris Hilton" tax, the levy is supposed to target the inherited wealth of the super-rich who really didn't earn it or don't really need so much of it. Or so we're told. But at some point, even inherited wealth was created and taxed in its creation. The death tax is double taxation, and just because you can't take it with you doesn't mean...

Well, 2010 has arrived -- and because Congress devoted so much effort toward health care reform, we may have ourselves some death panels after all. While critics have dismissed Sarah Palin's "death panels" to dole out medical care as fiction, a tax loophole may in fact give the heirs of some wealthy people a financial incentive to make this new year their loved one's last. In 2001, then-President George W. Bush signed a law designed to phase out the estate tax -- a tax on the assets a deceased individual leaves behind. The law reduced the amount wealthy families were...

Group Calls for Extension of Federal Estate Tax Published on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009. In a December 17 letter to Senators, Americans for a Fair Estate Tax has urged legislators to extend the Federal Estate Tax citing a loss in vital tax revenue and incentive for charitable giving. December 17, 2009 Dear Senator, Given the serious economic problems the country faces today, the Senate's apparent decision to let the federal estate tax expire on Jan. 1, 2010 is incomprehensible. Unless Congress takes action, the estate tax will disappear in 2010 and then return at higher levels in 2011. The estate...

here are some views on how the estate tax may shake down.

Next month, for one year only, the federal estate tax is set to go away. Don't break out the cyanide capsules just yet though, because Congress is likely to reinstate the tax retroactively sometime during 2010, as part of a permanent estate tax reform. When doing so, Congress should make sure to get the reform right - this means setting a high exemption so few taxpayers have to comply with the tax, and indexing the tax to inflation so it does not impact smaller estates over time. A temporary repeal is coming because of the structure of the 2001 Bush...

The House of Representatives on December 3rd passed House Resolution 4154, which is deceptively called the "Permanent Estate Tax Relief Act."  This bill is part of the general war by the Democratic Party on self-employed Americans, family farms, and home businesses.  Does this sound extreme?  Consider the vote on the message:  225 Democrats in the House voted for HR 4154 and 26 Democrats voted against it; not a single Republican voted for HR 4154.  No RINOs could be persuaded to support Congressman Pomeroy's attempt to freeze the estate tax emption level at $3.5 Million and then tax all estate assets...

The House votes 224-199 to cancel a one-year repeal of the estate tax, set to begin next month, and instead permanently extends the current tax, with a top rate of 45 percent on estates larger than $3.5 million.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Next year had been shaping up as a great year to get a big inheritance - no federal taxes on it. Congress, however, has other plans for the few wealthy heirs expecting a big boon. Uncle Sam may take a 45 percent cut after all. Under current law, the federal estate tax is scheduled to temporarily disappear next year before returning in 2011 at an even higher rate. But the House is expected to vote as early as Thursday on a bill that would permanently extend the current top rate of 45 percent on estates larger than...

Kevin Hancock simply wants to harvest trees - sustainably - and create jobs in the process. The federal government may put a stop to all that. His business, Hancock Lumber, has been in the family for six generations. It owns 30,000 acres of Maine timberland and employs 550 people. But Mr. Hancock already knows that when his elderly mother dies, he'll have to sell off huge swaths of land to pay the ensuing tax bill. He recently warned a Senate committee that, "Once it has been sold to a developer, it will be parceled off and will no longer be...

HOW do you tell a wealthy heiress from a family farmer? It sounds like the setup for a joke. But in fact it is the fundamental problem underlying sensible reform of the federal estate tax. Members of Congress are hoping to revise the current law on the estate tax by the end of this year; if they don’t, the estate tax will disappear for a year. Lawmakers should use the opportunity to solve the farmer/heiress riddle once and for all and move our tax system closer to the values on which the country was founded — that hard work should...

Senator Ted Kennedy has died.

I am sure that there is no way that I could possibly be the only person who thinks this. Perhaps I have just never heard this mentioned in the news anywhere, but does anyone else feel that the current health care reform bill is in some way a catalyst for the estate tax, or vice versus? I saw on the O'Reilly the other day how Dennis Miller ridiculed certain townhall protestors for comparing Obama to Hitler. Obama has in no way committed such blatant evils against mankind like Hitler did. A better comparison for Obama would be Stalin....I may not...

I’ve been struggling to understand the overheated rhetoric surrounding the proposal that allows Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling. I think I get it now: It is all about the death tax. Here is the story the government doesn’t want you to know. The 2001 Bush tax cuts will repeal the estate tax next year, but only for a year. Starting in less than 18 months, estates in excess of $1 million will once again be taxed at a stiff 55 percent. This will cost the children of the very wealthy tens of billions of not-so-hard-earned dollars. And it creates...

The recent deaths of Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays and Ed McMahon have many Americans thinking about mortality. If you're a business owner of a certain age, as I am, it's something you think about daily. Unlike television personalities and performing artists, most business owners labor in relative obscurity. Our legacy, when we pass, is what we've built — and perhaps invented (in my case, agricultural equipment most Americans have never heard of) — and the hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who depend on us for jobs. We're unlike television personalities and recording artists in another important respect...

Few taxes raise less revenue or make less sense than the federal estate tax. It is scheduled to be temporarily eliminated -- for 2010 -- only to reappear in 2011, and it has been a sore spot to family business owners since its inception. Research shows that these concerns are legitimate -- and, if anything, understated. Faced with the sunset provision, the White House would like to lock in the current tax rate permanently -- 45% of total assets over $3.5 million at the time of death. At the same time, some members of Congress are pressing to raise the...

The death tax is the issue that simply will not die. Fifteen years after Republican strategists put Democrats on the defensive by sticking that pejorative label on the federal estate tax, Democrats are still struggling with how to handle the levy on assets left behind — the one that conservatives portray as the Internal Revenue Service reaching beyond the grave. Studies show that the tax hits merely a sliver of wealthy American families. A proposal by President Obama would leave it at current levels, affecting only estates valued at more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples....

For Dale Allee, a second-generation cattle rancher in southern Colorado, the idiom that nothing is certain but death and taxes is now a reality. "I just turned 80 last week. You know what that means? That means I'm not going to be around here very long, and somebody's going to have to pay those taxes," said Allee, who fears federal estate taxes will thwart his plans to pass his 4,200-acre Pueblo County ranch to his children. Land-rich but cash poor, Western ranchers are lobbying Washington to exempt them from the estate tax, which can force heirs to sell their inheritance...

The Senate Finance Committee will move within weeks on legislation to reverse that law, and Mr. Obama is expected to detail his estate-tax preservation proposal in his budget next month, congressional tax writers said. Under the Obama plan detailed during the campaign, the estate tax would be locked in permanently at the rate and exemption levels that took effect this year. That would exempt estates of $3.5 million -- $7 million for couples -- from any taxation. The value of estates above that would be taxed at 45%.

First of all, let's call this trillion-dollar giveaway what it is - the Paris Hilton Tax Break. It's about giving billions of dollars to billionaire heirs and heiresses at a time when American taxpayers just can't afford it. The Republicans have brought out the Paris Hilton Tax Break in June because they're eager to make it an election issue in November. And I think that's fine. In fact, I'm eager for the American people to choose. Because if people want their government to spend one trillion dollars - an amount more than double what we've spent on Iraq, Afghanistan, and...

Death and Whoopi's Taxes December 10, 2007; Page A18 We don't normally look to Tinsel Town liberals for insights on U.S. tax policy, but Whoopi Goldberg's comments on the estate tax last week deserve more attention. During a discussion of Republican Presidential candidates on ABC's "The View," which the comedian co-hosts, Ms. Goldberg said, "I'd like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That's what I want. I don't want to get taxed just because I died." The studio audience started applauding, but she wasn't done. "I just don't think it's right," she continued. "If I give something to...

Though America got where it is today by following a pattern of freedom and prosperity followed, Americans at a present political crossroads may be in danger of choosing instead a path that leads to inevitable demise, said Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson Monday in Marshalltown. Thompson, however, advocated adhering to the country’s foundational principles and doing what is right. “How often, when you do the right thing, it turns out to be good politics too?” he said to a full room at the Tremont on Main. At the core of his campaign, Thompson said he stands behind a federalism based...

Progressivism was the reform movement that ran from the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, during which leading intellectuals and social reformers in the United States sought to address the economic, political, and cultural questions that had arisen in the context of the rapid changes brought with the Industrial Revolution and the growth of modern capitalism in America. The Progressives believed that these changes marked the end of the old order and required the creation of a new order appropriate for the new industrial age. There are, of course, many different representations of Progressivism: the...

This summer, the Senate fell short of the super-majority needed to bring to a vote a measure permanently repealing the estate tax. This means the current reduced-rate estate tax will revert to the full pre-2001 rates of up to 55 percent by 2011 unless other action is taken. The Senate's lack of action prompted the House to pass the Estate Tax and Extension of Tax Relief Act (H.R. 5970), which would extend estate tax relief beyond 2010, but would not eliminate the tax. This is unfortunate. The evidence shows that the estate tax does little to redistribute wealth and may...

In all the publicity about their attack on Senator Joe Lieberman, it has gone almost unnoticed that the far left has also targeted some members of the Black Caucus for their support of highly selective Bush administration policies. This support often came about only after hard negotiations to win administration support for programs to help people in their districts. Having lived in Chicago for two decades I find it almost unimaginable that former Black Panther Bobby Rush could be challenged from his left, but he was. Cong. Rush’s vote for the energy bill upset the masters of the Internet’s political...

I.R.S. to Cut Tax AuditorsBy DAVID CAY JOHNSTON Published: July 23, 2006 The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others. The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The...

According to sources familiar with the prep sessions with Paulson, the former Wall Street executive and well-known supporter of and financial contributor to Democrats could not get in line with the Bush administration's support for ending the estate or "death" tax, and permanent extension of the capital gains tax and other tax cuts that are due to expire in the next three years.

Mr.Buffett. As an avowed supporter of the estate tax, Mr. Buffett could have let the government take its share of his estate after he dies. But just as Mr. Buffett has accumulated his vast wealth without paying much personal income tax, he has found a way to avoid the tax man in this maneuver as well, even writing in his letter to Bill and Melinda Gates that a condition of the gift is that the foundation “must continue to satisfy legal requirements qualifying my gifts as charitable and not subject to gift or other taxes.” On the estate tax, watch...

Senators voted Thursday to reject a Republican effort to abolish taxes on inherited estates during an election year with control of Congress at stake. GOP leaders had pushed senators to permanently eliminate the estate tax, which disappears in 2010 under President Bush's first tax cut, but rears up again a year later. A 57-41 vote fell three votes short of advancing the bill. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Senate will vote again this year on a tax that opponents call the "death tax." "Getting rid of the death tax is just too important an issue to give...

It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax. The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits. Thanks to the baby bust and medical inflation, spending is projected to rise by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, a growth equivalent to the doubling of today's Medicare program. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take a source of revenue and abolish it outright. -snip- People often remark on the perversity of popular support...

This week the Senate is expected to vote on permanent repeal of the estate tax. With this vote, Congress will have an opportunity to finish the job it started five years ago. The estate tax -- or, as many of us prefer to call it, the death tax -- is a tax imposed on the transfer of assets or property from a deceased person to his or her heirs. This is one of the IRS's most painful taxes, as it hits families at the worst possible time, when they are dealing with the death of a loved one. Congress passed...

A decade-long drive to permanently repeal the estate tax is about to come to a head, but proponents are finding it surprisingly difficult to get their political football into the end zone. The repeal proposal may be an indirect casualty of Hurricane Katrina, which forced Senate leaders to postpone a vote on the plan in September, when hopes it would pass were high. Now, with the Senate poised to vote as early as this week, even some of the most ardent supporters of estate tax repeal predict they will come up short. Some of them are pushing an alternative that...