Check it out! Great way to present the issue to those who have bought into it being a 'death tax' and something which threatens family businesses and farms.
I was trying to understand the other day how discussion of the estate tax has lead to a vote in the next few days on repealing the estate tax. Do folks not know that portion of an estate that is exempt from taxation has doubled since 2000 to $2 million ($4 million per couple) in 2006, with the current law stating that it will rise to $3.5 million ($7 million per couple) in 2009? Do folks not know that the above has caused the number of estates being taxed each year to drop 75% compared to what it would have been under pre-20001 law, with the 2009 increase in the exemption level causing that low number to drop by about another 50%? In 2006 only five out of every 1,000 people who die this year (and about half that in 2009) will pay any estate tax. It is estimated that only 123 farms, and 135 small businesses, would have paid any estate tax in 2006, and that for 2009 this drops to 100 family businesses and only 65 farm estates (few call these "family farms"), with only 13 farms facing a liquidity constraint because of failure to put aside money in bank accounts, stocks, bonds or insurance, perhaps forcing them to use the allowed spreading of the estate tax payments over a 14-year period in order to avoid a sale of the farm estate.
The goal of any estate tax reform should be to relieve smaller estates from the tax while capturing the unpaid capital gains tax at the same tax rate applied to wage income, thereby preserving a large share of estate tax revenue and focusing the tax on those wealthy estates most able to pay. The GOP has no plan for replacing the One Trillion of revenue lost over 10 years, other than passing it onto the backs of future children as a “birth tax increase”. What is the reasoning for the repeal the "death tax" -and it is not a death tax since it only tries to capture the unpaid capital gains tax at the income tax rates applied to wages –that is a goal of the GOP despite the corresponding increase in the birth tax - the deficit caused national debt that future births must handle? Are the GOP being truthful when they say repeal is a needed benefit for Farms and Small Businesses?
There is more
at the original thread Please drop by for a look. Please recommend that thread if you see the value of the argument.
Papau graciously said I could print it up and circulate it. Reckon he'd let you use it too! It is a great rebuttal to the 17 richest families who have hired teams to get the estate tax canned so they can keep sifting the economy and concentrating more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
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