Repealing the estate tax, columnist Sebastian Mallaby argues, would be the worst possible response to the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the nation’s growing debt. He writes:
“The nation faces the prospect that inequality will damage meritocracy. When the distance between top and bottom widens, it becomes harder to traverse the gap; people of low birth are stuck at the bottom, and human talent is wasted. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take the tax that limits what the super-rich pass on to their children and get rid of it. Send a message to hereditary elites: Go ahead, entrench yourselves! . . .
“Repealing the estate tax is like erecting protectionist barriers around the hereditary elite. It is anti-meritocratic and unfair — and antithetical to this nation’s best traditions.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
- American_Way on Open thread 11/22
- American_Way on Open thread 11/22
- Phantom on Pro-con on Obama’s China visit
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/22
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/22
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
- Pleefer on Open thread 11/22
- JimJohnson on Open thread 11/22
33 Comments
I wonder if any of the uber rich Democrats and the inherited class like the Kennedy’s ever paid the Death Tax?
Probably not.
But that being said. We will always have an inherited nobility class. That isn’t going to go away no matter the death tax or not.
I’m for getting rid of it, because I’m for the Fair Tax. That way the rich actually pay more in taxes.
During the Clinton administration a commission on small business was formed to figure out what could be done to help small businesses thrive. One of the top items that commission recommended was the repeal of the estate tax. Why? It is often impossible to pass a small business on to children because the cost of the estate tax forces them to chop the business up and sell part of it off to pay the tax bill. In most cases that essentially would kill the business so the buisness gets sold off or peiced out and closed. Jobs gone. Mom and Dad spend 40 years building a successfull small business,paying their fair share of taxes along the way, but cant pass it on to junior cause he’d have to sell half the business assets to pay the taxes. Business closes, jobs gone. Fair huh.
And all those filthy stinking super rich people you class warriors want to stick it too? They set up elaborate trusts and other tax shelters and get by without paying any of what you folks think your going to get out of them. You think the Kennedy clan ever paid a dime of estate taxes?
The estate tax is the epitome of unfairness. It kills small businesses, kills jobs, and takes from people who’ve paid their fair share of taxes their whole life, all for the purpose of satisfying the greed of government and the envy of people who’ve never created a job in their life.
JM
Good question? Why hasnt that been done? Doesnt seem to matter which party is in charge the tax code gets more screwed.
But where is the morality in taking the property of someone who’s paid their taxes all their life? Doesnt matter if it’s a Mom and Pop muffler shop on the corner or a someone who’s made tens of millions in real estate. As long as they have paid their fair share in taxes along the way, what makes it right for the government to take ANYTHING from their estate when they die?
There is a proposal. It’s called the Fair Tax. HR 25.
To learn more. Go to http://www.fairtax.org
Get rid of all the monkey humping and scrap the tax code. Go Fair Tax.
Taxes should be used for funding the operations of government, not manipulating society or “getting” those you don’t like. Our tax code manipulates people. It attempts to control their behavior. Scrap it.
IMO, dynastic wealth is bad for America.
Libs have BS opinions. Joe Blow has the facts:
Top 5% of earners pay 53.25% of all income taxes. The top 10% pay 64.89%. The top 25% pay 82.9%. The top 50% pay 96.03%. The bottom 50%? They pay a paltry 3.97% of all income taxes.The top 1% is paying more than ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 50%! And who earns what?
The top 1% earns 17.53 (2000: 20.81%) of all income. The top 5% earns 31.99 (2000: 35.30%). The top 10% earns 43.11% (2000: 46.01%); the top 25% earns 65.23% (2000: 67.15%), and the top 50% earns 86.19% (2000: 87.01%) of all the income.
Joe Blow! You forgot to mention that a large portion of the bottom 50% do not pay any taxes at all. They are actually net tax reciepents, yet they bitch about the rich not paying enough.
I also forgot to mention that these “estates” consist of money that has ALREADY been taxed. But, of course, that doesn’t matter to the tax and spend crowd. It’s not enough. Because it will NEVER be enough.
I love listening to liberals bellyache about someone else getting a tax cut.
I do wonder, though, how many of them donated their tax savings the past few years to the Treasury out of conscience?
Don’t forget about the “unearned tax credit”. Refunds of taxes not paid but because you qualify you get money back anyway.
Whether the tax is fair or warranted is not the point now. With tax revenues as they stand we are running a (big) deficit. Until a long term plan for bringing spending into line with revenues is implemented, making a bad situation by reducing revenues with no concurrent spending reductions is folly.
Kids are having to sell the family farm to pay the taxes. That’s about about as wrong as “wrong” gets.
They’re made to suffer for being taxed on increased property values mostly driven-up by the “greedy” corporate farms.
The best “tax-cut” is getting rid of Bush { from the spending side }.
Ed! Farmers don’t pay taxes. They recieve them through wealth distribution called subsidies.
Joe, I hope that last statement wasn’t about small, family farms.
If you are farming grain, oil seeds, cotton or any subsidized crop, it doesn’t matter what size of farm you are. My statement stands.
So yes! I do mean small and farm families.
I’m trying to decide if you are willfully lying, or just ignorant, Joe.
Prove that I’m wrong!
http://www.ewg.org/reports/agsupp2006/cdmap.php
You let me know how many “corporate farms” there are in Western Kansas.
You guys are so blind. Blinded by the romatizing of farmers. I admire the hard working farmer that grows melons and strawberries. Things we actually eat, but subsidized grain farmers I don’t respect. They are welfare queens.
Would you consider KFG a small farm? Ask her how much subsidies she recieved. Then with all the write offs, ask her how much she actually paid in income tax, most likely $0. Subsidies she recieves for her small farm is in the thousands.
Now she is a bit different because she actually grows other foods people eat and does the Farmers Market. I can respect that. But her grain side is all supplied by us.
Joe, you seem to think all farmers sit around and do nothing while collecting subsidies. You might want to go back and find out just why subsidies were instituted in the first place.
You don’t eat grains? Hmmmmm. No bread? No cereal? No cakes or cookies? No chips? If you’re so against grain farmers, go grow it, mill it, and make your own. And while you’re at it, do the same with dairy products and all the rest.
While being involved in farming for over 20 years, I can assure you that subsidies were but a small pittance of what would be considered income. And there were many years we paid in to the IRS. Add that to the loan payments for machinery and you’d see that disposable income was a dream.
Ever wonder why you see so many new housing developments in the rural areas around Wichita? Small family farms are being sold to developers to pay debts and get out of farming. Small family farms can’t make it these days, thanks to corporate farming, which has found and uses every corporate loophole known to business. The kids don’t want to stay on the farm. Why would they? There’s no future and nothing but hard work for little money. Those in the urban areas who want to try their hand at farming DON’T HAVE A CLUE what it takes, nor do most have the money to start an operation or keep it running.
Most small family farmers I know also work a full-time job, and their wives do too. Why? They have to eat. They have to have a roof over the heads, they, too, have to pay for increases in the cost of food that THEY are not benefitting from.
Clueless Joe
As ever clueless. I hope kfg shows up and takes you apart for your assumptions on her and your unfair attack.
Yours aint the only bs on this thread. But as usual you are standing on the side of the fence hip deep in it.
The Estate tax was assessed on estates in excess of 5 MILLION dollars in value. Hardly the province of the mom and pop curio store or a muffler shop. When my grandparents died their 100 acre farm was valued at something like 115,000 dollars. The “death tax”? on their estate? $0
And predictably among the rich gettin’ richer crowd, we get the mention of the “fair tax” yet ANOTHER assualt on the middle class and in particular the poor!
The Estate tax should not be repealed. Further, income tax brackets and assessments should be returned to the pre Reagan if not pre Kennedy status. Remember back then? When the American Dream was still possible?
>> the “fair tax” yet ANOTHER assualt on the middle class and in particular the poor!>Further, income tax brackets and assessments should be returned to the pre Reagan if not pre Kennedy status.<<
Do you remember how high those tax rates were back then? Even JFK knew that a tax cut would energize the economy. He was right.
The problem isn’t tax cuts….it’s spending. My humble opinion.
Saw a C-SPAN debate where one Dem senator (I forget who) had mentioned that, for three years running, he had sponsored a bill to eliminate inheritance taxes on ALL family farms.
He said the Repub majority has opposed it as every turn. I don’t know that it’s factual claim, but I recall such a bill being introduced and rejected earlier. Look at the bankruptcy bill they passed. They are in favor of keeping the affluent affluent and pulling up the ladder for the rest of us. Hang on to your assets for dear life, guys; if you take a fall, your friends in Washington are doing everything they can to make sure you stay down. You can blather all about entrepeneurship and hard work as you want. And try not to get sick. When you get a saddled with huge medical bills (and no insurance to cover them), when you’re too sick to work but can maybe flip burgers (thus no disability payments), when you’re a steel worker who has to retrain after 25 years of doing the same thing, you might approach something resembling comprehension.
The tax cuts in question were in fact weighted in such a way that those who made large dollars got large cuts, and those who make small dollars actually end up losing money.
In reality, it means people who are quite comfortable do even better, and those who ain’t so comfortable get their candy-bar savings eaten up by social security taxes. To illustrate: In 1981, I was a young man earning $123 a week. When the Kemp-Roth tax “cuts” went into effect, my boss made $7 a week more, and my paychecks were now $122. If he had been wealthy–and not paying his own SS taxes–the disparity would have been dramatic.
In fact, we have a predictable and not-at-all new situation (see the Gilded Age, 1890s, or Reaganomics, 1980s), wherein the wealthy elite fund candidates who in turn do their bidding, and who in turn repay them with more contributions to keep the system going.
Democracy? Hah! Touch-screen machines can be hacked with ease–academic studies have show that. The next election will likely be determined by who has the better wizards–but those in power structure have all the passwords.
Help me out here Rage.
Wasn’t it Teddy Roosevelt (the last good Republican …who ultimately left that party and its been over ever since) who helped create the Estate tax in order to address the inequities of the Robber Baron era?
JR,This may not be from the most neutral site (No doubt I’ll be called on that!), but it was most convenient on a quick Google:
“In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed a federal inheritance tax, saying, “The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.” Roosevelt recognized that wealthy citizens benefitted particularly from government protection of wealth and property rights.”
http://www.faireconomy.org/estatetax/ETHistory.html
Since my memory accords with yours, I don’t think they made it up.
Thank you Rage that is just what I wanted! Spot on. And bully!
Doesn’t sound like a tin hat site to me, Rage. In fact the piece reads like a well written, well researched work. Excellent.
If you don’t totally protect the very rich ….. How else can an utterly MORON be President?
Here are some interesting tid-bits for everyone:
Does the estate tax affect the super-rich? No. That is why they have teams of lawyers, to create entities that shield them from taxes. Don’t forget the lobbyists whose purpose is to create loopholes for the lawyers to jump through. The estate tax punishes the almost rich.
Next up, the proverbial gap between the rich and poor. That deserves a big so what? Does it really bother people that someone else has more money/wealth? What is important is that in America you can achieve a suitable standard of living. It does not matter that someone else has a billion times more than you. I have evangelized in Central American countries and served the poor in America. The projects in America are head and shoulders above the Costa Rican slums. Even the poor in the U.S. do not have a clue about real poverty, but lets all sit around and lament.
‘Conservatives crack me up. This ‘death’ tax does not hurt family farms (as if). This tax only comes in AFTER 4 million dollars. The first 4 million dollars is tax FREE! Dont be fooled by the lies and distortion by republicans and this administration. The economy is NOT booming. We are at a war that we were lied to about and this president wants to give his billionaire buddies another free ride. Its time to eliminate taxes on EVERYBODY below $50,00 per year and force the uber rich to pay.
mq
What good is being filthy rich if you can’t buy a government that will keep you that way?