Just got one in my email box and one point was on the estate tax... found two things I wanted to post up... here is that assertion...
INHERITANCE TAXThe number of farms is next to nhil from what everyone is saying... But lets check with one of the most successful businessmen in the world...
McCCAIN - 0% (No change, this tax has been repealed.)
OBAMA - keep the inheritance tax.
How does this affect you? Many families have lost
businesses, farms and ranches, and homes that have been in
their families for generations because they could
not afford the inheritance tax.
November 15, 2007
Buffett Says No Estate Tax Would Be a Gift to the Rich
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Warren E. Buffett urged Congress yesterday to maintain the estate tax, saying that plans to repeal the tax would benefit a handful of the richest American families and widen income disparity in the United States.
Mr. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, told the Senate Finance Committee that advocates of repeal were “dead wrong” to call the tax a “death tax.”
It would be more appropriate to call it a “death present,” Mr. Buffett, 77, said. “A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy.”
Congressional Democrats are likely to seize on Mr. Buffett’s comments to bolster their argument that repeal of the estate tax amounts to a windfall for a few wealthy families. Republicans have pushed to eliminate the tax permanently or reduce the rate and exempt more estates by raising the value at which the tax takes effect.
Mr. Buffett said that in the last 20 years, tax laws have allowed the “superrich” to become richer.
“Tax law changes have benefited this group, including me, in a huge way,” he said. “During that time the average American went exactly nowhere on the economic scale: he’s been on a treadmill while the superrich have been on a spaceship.”
Lawmakers are under pressure to reach some agreement on the future of the tax because a law enacted by Congress in 2001 gradually phases it out through 2010, when it will be fully repealed for one year. The tax is scheduled to return in 2011 with a top rate of 55 percent on estates worth more than $1 million. For this year, individual estates valued at more than $2 million are taxed at a top rate of 45 percent.
The chairman of the finance committee, Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said yesterday that fewer than 1 percent of United States households currently pay the tax. He said repeal lacked support in the Senate and the purpose of the hearing was to solicit ideas for replacing the shifting rules and uncertainty of the current system.
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the panel, said the estate tax should be repealed because “death should not be a taxable event.”
“As long as a person has accumulated an estate in accordance with the law, the government should not be able to profit from that person’s death,” he said.
He said, however, that he might be willing to accept a compromise short of repeal, as long as lawmakers “are looking out for small-business owners and family farmers.”
nonpartisan Tax Policy Center:
The Estate Tax (pg. 19)
Senator McCain’s proposal to reduce the estate tax rate to 15 percent and increase the exemption to $5 million would reduce estate and income tax revenues by approximately $580 billion over 10 years. It would cut estate tax revenues by 90 percent and reduce the extent to which the estate tax backstops the income tax (that is, taxing assets that might have escaped income tax as they accumulated because of careful tax planning or loopholes, including the exemption of capital gains on assets transferred at death). Under the proposal, only about 4,000 estates would be subject to the tax in 2011 (less than 0.2 percent of the 2.5 million adult decedents).
The estate tax has ambiguous effects on working and saving. The tax may discourage some wealthy people who care about their heirs from saving or working by reducing the size of after-tax bequests. Others, however, may have a target amount of wealth they want to transfer, in which case they would need to save more to offset the expected tax liability. Further, the tax may encourage some potential heirs to work and save more because they are less able to live well off the proceeds of inherited wealth (for discussion, see Burman, Gale, and Rohaly 2005). On balance, the proposal is likely to have very small effects on work effort, saving, or overall economic performance. It would, however, reduce the progressivity of the tax system because only the richest estates now pay estate tax. Compared with leaving the 2009 rates and exemptions in place, near repeal of the tax as Senator McCain has proposed would disproportionately benefit a very small group of extremely wealthy individuals.
rich kids need to work just like the rest of us. No free rides, no free rides...
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com
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