Free Republic

President Barack Obama isn’t afraid to enact his agenda over the will of Congress. At this late stage in his presidency, he’s still overreaching his authority to push through an agenda; his most recent overstep being an effort to unilaterally raise the federal estate tax. Conservatives have successfully lessened the impact of the estate tax, colloquially known as the “death tax,” in recent years. In 2000, before George W. Bush became president, the death tax had a rate of 55 percent and struck families with assets valued at $675,000 or more.

It appears that the pop star Prince may have died without a will, leaving behind a multi-million dollar and growing estate. Although Prince has one full sister and five half-siblings, Prince’s family members will not be his biggest heirs. Both the federal government and Minnesota’s state government will assess so-called “death taxes” or estate taxes on Prince’s assets, taking away more than half his estate. Between his physical assets— cash, investments, home, etc.—and his future royalties, Prince’s estate has been estimated to be between $300 and $500 million. If Prince were married, he could have passed on the entirety of...

Earlier this week we took a look at the GOP efforts to repeal the death tax, including some of the political pitfalls involved as well as reasons why it’s still a hill worth fighting on. In a rare moment of taking a position on a policy issue, Hillary Clinton has chimed in on the so called estate tax several times over the years. She has referred to it as a “wealth tax”, which works out quite well for her this year if she’s trying to angle her way into a more Elizabeth Warren style position on the subject. So...

They say there are two things that are certain in life: death and taxes. If you're a Democrat, you can add death taxes to that list. The death tax, which was being phased out by President Bush from 2001-2008 but revived by the Obama administration in 2009, currently sits at 40 percent. More background from Heritage: Estate tax (death tax) repeal. The Bush tax cuts phased out the death tax. It was supposed to be completely eliminated after 2009. However, after being dormant for one year in 2009, the 2010 deal between President Obama and Congress brought it back to life at...

For the first time in just over a decade, the U.S. House of Representatives today will vote on a bill to abolish the death tax, otherwise known the federal estate tax. H.R. 1105—the “Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015″—has bipartisan support, which is evident by its co-sponsors: Congressmen Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Sanford Bishop (D-Georgia). Attempts to repeal the federal death tax acknowledge what the 32 states without a death tax already understand: a tax on an individual’s personal property, business assets and investments, even with a $5 million exemption, results in high compliance costs, little revenue and bad incentives....

It’s undoubtedly too soon to begin getting your hopes up yet, but there are signs that the new GOP controlled Congress may finally be getting down to some of the regular business we were promised during the election. Plenty of fire and brimstone has been flying around both chambers over matters of foreign policy and big ticket items, but some mundane issues of importance to conservatives are still waiting on the back burner. Today, one of these should be moving forward. We’re going to have yet another vote on repealing the death tax and it’s got both teams pretty...

With the federal budget debate underway in Washington, both political parties are certainly sparring over different fiscal visions for the country. There is, however, a chance for rare bi-partisan agreement: repealing the federal death tax. This unpopular tax has long had an adverse impact on small, family business owners who want the next generation to continue the family legacy. Currently, the federal government seizes over 40 percent of an individual’s estate when they die. While the President wants to destroy so many of those legacies and raise taxes, Congress has the chance to go in a different direction. Federal lawmakers...

For the first time in a decade, the U.S. House of Representatives may soon vote to kill the death tax. The death tax in the United States was born in the North and South as a way to pay for the Civil War. When the war ended, the tax lingered until 1870. It sprang back to life to fund World War I. The war ended and the tax shrank. It then grew to full fury during World War II. The tax has been cut back, then expanded. It even disappeared for one full year in 2010 before returning. But even...

On Feb. 2, 2015, on the heels of the State of the Union Address, the Obama Administration released its budget proposal for the 2016 fiscal year, accompanied by the Treasury Department's General Explanation of the Administration's Fiscal Year 2016 Revenue Proposals (colloquially known as the Greenbook).[1] Given the percentage of his previous proposals that have been passed and the newly-elected Republican majority in both houses of Congress, the vast majority of the proposals in the Greenbook are unlikely to become law during President Obama's last two years in office. However, they are worth noting, as they identify the focus points...

...WALLACE:The White House has made it clear that it flatly opposes paying ransom..now,ISIS is making a new demand,offering a swap of the Japanese hostage for a terrorist being held in Jordan.Is that something to be considered?MCDONOUGH:You know,our policies are pretty well set..We don't get into negotiation with terrorists.We don't pay ransom..we're not going to do that.WALLACE:And a prisoner swap?MCDONOUGH:We're not going to do that.WALLACE:And you would advise the Japanese not to do that......WALLACE:..the president wants to pay for free community college,for increased child care tax credits by raising taxes on the wealthy,$210 billion over 10 years......WALLACE:..during the Obama years,the top...

Let's assume George and Ethel, two teachers, purchased their Southern California home in 1966 for $45,000. Lets also assume that over the next fifty years, the value of the house increased to $1,345,000. Let's also assume that George and Ethel had four children and each of them went to a private four year college and that George and Ethel continued to re-finance their home to put their children through college and take a few cruises. Today, there is a $1,145,000 loan on the house. With pensions and other savings, the now retired teachers manage to pay their mortgage and live...

As the old saying goes, there are two things that are certain in life, death and taxes. Tomorrow night during his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Obama will announce that people paying taxes their entire lives just isn't good enough. The President wants the current 40 percent death tax rate increased to 60 percent. Americans for Tax Reform breaks down the details: 2. Stealth increase in the death tax rate from 40% to nearly 60%. Under current law, when you inherit an asset your basis in the asset is the higher of the fair market value at the...

If you're a New York multimillionaire, you now have another incentive to stay alive. A change this month in New York's estate tax, which was billed as tax relief for the wealthy, contains a hidden wrinkle that could leave some multimillionaires with a much bigger surprise tax upon their death. Certain estates could even wind up with a tax rate of 164 percent on portions of their estates, according to one tax expert. The changes were intended to ease the tax bill for wealthy New Yorkers and prevent them from fleeing to lower-tax states. A report from the Tax Foundation...

With the current relatively generous federal estate tax exemption of $5.25 million for 2013 and $5.34 million for 2014, you surely don't have any estate tax worries. Right? Not necessarily! It turns out that 19 states and the District of Columbia impose their own estate and/or inheritance taxes, and most of them have exemptions well below the federal amount. If you live in one of these places, your estate might be exempt from the federal estate tax but still exposed to a significant state death tax hit. Yikes! Here's what you need to know.

I want to introduce you to a magnificent document that far too few people have read. But before I introduce it to you, I need to remind you of something written in Federalist #84, that English history is American history. Hamilton specifically sites several(major) English documents that are important pre-cursors to the US Constitution. The earliest of said documents in that chain is the magnificent 1100 Charter of Liberties. Hamilton cites Magna Carta as the earliest, but the M.C. is really reliant upon the 1100 Charter as a precedent. In this Charter of Liberties, you will see, among other things,...

It has been said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Thankfully, across the states it’s becoming less likely for Americans to be actually taxed on death. Recently, the Wall Street Journal had an outstanding editorial on the Death Tax (otherwise known as the estate or inheritance tax) across the 50 states, titled “The Die Harder States.” The editorial points out a positive trend: four states have recently scraped their death tax. Recently, we chronicled North Carolina and Indiana’s pro-growth move to eliminate their death tax. With the addition of Ohio and Tennessee to the “States that...

An abiding lesson of the Obama Presidency is that no tax increase is ever enough. So it's not surprising that the President's new budget includes an increase in the death tax only three months after the last increase. In January Mr. Obama and Republicans agreed to tax estates at 40% with an exemption of $5 million ($10 million for couples). That was an increase from 35% and a $5 million exemption. Now only weeks later he's again looking for more, as his budget proposes to raise the rate to 45% and reduce the exemption to $3.5 million. Mr. Obama's budget...

Everyone in Washington, D.C., who works on taxes is consumed with one area or another of reform: international provisions, the corporate rate, full business expensing, the spread between the top personal and corporate rates, etc. All of these — and many others besides — are vital parts of comprehensive tax reform. But there’s one area that’s rarely mentioned, despite its economic importance and despite the fact that it’s a deeply immoral blot on our system that 70 percent of Americans want gone for good: the death tax. The fiscal cliff and its legislative aftermath created a “new normal” in the...

New legislation that jumps the death tax to 55 percent of estates exceeding $1 million threatens 526,421 family farms, of about 25 percent of all farms in America. ... Farm values are largely tied up in non-liquid assets like land, buildings, and livestock. Many farm and ranch families would be forced to sell their assets to satisfy Washington Democrats' insatiable appetite for tax money. Up to 24 percent of America's farm and ranch families could be forced to hand over a large chunk of their heritage to the Internal Revenue Service when a family member dies. This would economically devastate...