APP - @Rune: Estate taxes should be severely reduced

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estate taxes in the US are ridiculously high. the theory behind this is that we should not allow the rich to continue to propagate their wealth and that we should spread the money around to other citizens.

this is not what this country was founded on, nor should any country embrace this. if you worked your life and earned X, it should not be taxed at a higher rate than Y upon death. further, you have already been taxed on that money. death taxes are mostly absurd, but there is some logic in it. i will live the logic part up to rune to debate.

i propose a flat 15% estate tax.
 
15% isn't bad as long as it doesn't kick in on estates under at least a couple million. .
I disagree with your contention as to why they are taxed though. That is just the justification used. The real reason is that legislators are expensive and they need to get money from anywhere they can find it.
 
Rune said:
15% isn't bad as long as it doesn't kick in on estates under at least a couple million. .
I disagree with your contention as to why they are taxed though. That is just the justification used. The real reason is that legislators are expensive and they need to get money from anywhere they can find it.
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Why the distinction on estate worth ? If its wrong fir this one how is it right for that one ?
 
Rune said:
15% isn't bad as long as it doesn't kick in on estates under at least a couple million. .
I disagree with your contention as to why they are taxed though. That is just the justification used. The real reason is that legislators are expensive and they need to get money from anywhere they can find it.
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it is not my contention, it is the justification. please learn the difference. what i gather is, your position is that you're ok with estate taxes above a couple of million, but nothing under. is this correct?

i agree with you about legislators. they can and do tax anything that walks or breathes...oh wait...we're talking about death taxes...so they will tax anything, living or not. :)

why shouldn't everyone pay 15%? my proposal is under the current rates for all citizens.
 
Yurt said:
it is not my contention, it is the justification. please learn the difference. what i gather is, your position is that you're ok with estate taxes above a couple of million, but nothing under. is this correct?

i agree with you about legislators. they can and do tax anything that walks or breathes...oh wait...we're talking about death taxes...so they will tax anything, living or not. :)
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Honestly I don't know what the lower limit should be. I picked $2 million out of thin air, figuring that if one were to inherit $2 million, they could well afford to pay $300,000 in tax. Perhaps it should be 5 million or one million. 5 might be better, because I know quite a few millionaires who are not "wealthy", but their assets total over a million. This is a common byproduct of gentrification. Middle class millionaires. Were one to inherit real assets worth over a million (for example one's family homestead) but no cash, and be required to pay $150,000 for the privilege of remaining in one's lifetime home, yet not be capable of doing so, an injustice has occurred.
why shouldn't everyone pay 15%? my proposal is under the current rates for all citizens.
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Why should everyone pay? Is it because everyone should have "skin in the game"? (what a disgusting phrase).

The intention of estate taxes are clear, as you alluded to in your opening, to prevent dynastic accumulations of wealth to the point at which they are detrimental to democracy. Such a situation exists today, where the legislators do the bidding of those who donate the most. Legal bribery. Legal only because those who benefit from it made it so.
Morally incorrect however, and in the true sense of a representative republic, not justifiable (shouldn't be legal).
That being the case, everyone having to pay does nothing to accomplish the purported goal.

I am not moving the goal posts here. I do not believe one can actually legislate morality or accomplish specific goals through legislation due to the law of unintended consequences, however we must try. The reason it can't work of course is that those who benefit are those who would have to make the changes and they don't want to. Furthermore, there will always be loopholes which the wealthy will and do find.

Therefore, since there can be no actual affect (other than cursory) on the great fortunes already accumulated, the best we can hope for is to tax large estates for whatever we can get away with and attempt to pay down the national debt so the GOP can no longer use is as an excuse to cut social services.

Furthermore, allowing those inheritors under a certain level to inherit untaxed does have the additional benefit of working against wealth inequality, an issue which will have increasingly dire consequences.
 
There are a variety of inheritance taxes. Feds allow you to keep the first $5 million. After that, each state is different. In N.Y, the first $million is free, then the next $100k is taxed at app.33%. From there, it drops to almost nothing. Real estate basis changes to the value of the property at death, so cap gains is considerably lower...but it increases the overall value of the estate.

IMO, if an estate was built via using assets as tax shelters, then said estate should be taxed. Commercial properties take depreciation every year, and mortgage/taxes are 100% deductible.

Residences are different. It's a hardship when, as mentioned above, a family has to come up with vast sums of cash, solely to keep a property in the family. If I'm not mistaken, a family can continue to live in a residence without paying estate taxes.

As well, there are a variety of trusts and gifting laws that allow you to reduce the size of the estate
 
Rune said:
Honestly I don't know what the lower limit should be. I picked $2 million out of thin air, figuring that if one were to inherit $2 million, they could well afford to pay $300,000 in tax. Perhaps it should be 5 million or one million. 5 might be better, because I know quite a few millionaires who are not "wealthy", but their assets total over a million. This is a common byproduct of gentrification. Middle class millionaires. Were one to inherit real assets worth over a million (for example one's family homestead) but no cash, and be required to pay $150,000 for the privilege of remaining in one's lifetime home, yet not be capable of doing so, an injustice has occurred.

Why should everyone pay? Is it because everyone should have "skin in the game"? (what a disgusting phrase).

The intention of estate taxes are clear, as you alluded to in your opening, to prevent dynastic accumulations of wealth to the point at which they are detrimental to democracy. Such a situation exists today, where the legislators do the bidding of those who donate the most. Legal bribery. Legal only because those who benefit from it made it so.
Morally incorrect however, and in the true sense of a representative republic, not justifiable (shouldn't be legal).
That being the case, everyone having to pay does nothing to accomplish the purported goal.

I am not moving the goal posts here. I do not believe one can actually legislate morality or accomplish specific goals through legislation due to the law of unintended consequences, however we must try. The reason it can't work of course is that those who benefit are those who would have to make the changes and they don't want to. Furthermore, there will always be loopholes which the wealthy will and do find.

Therefore, since there can be no actual affect (other than cursory) on the great fortunes already accumulated, the best we can hope for is to tax large estates for whatever we can get away with and attempt to pay down the national debt so the GOP can no longer use is as an excuse to cut social services.

Furthermore, allowing those inheritors under a certain level to inherit untaxed does have the additional benefit of working against wealth inequality, an issue which will have increasingly dire consequences.
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we agree on the reason for the tax, but not the amount. just because someone can "afford" to pay a tax, doesn't mean we should tax them. that is not what this country was founded on, nor is it any part of our current governmental philosophy. such a notion is akin to marxism. if we take that philosophy to its logical conclusion, then why not tax them 99% of their wealth...afterall...they can afford it.

you didn't really move the goal posts, but i don't believe estate taxes do anything to alleviate your concern about legal bribery. there will always be wealthy people and not every wealthy person inherits their money. there has been legal bribery since our founding and before taxes. taxes will never stop it. nor should taxes be the remedy to ending legal bribery. if you want to change that, don't steal people's money, create new campaign finance laws, but do not punish the wealthy simply for being wealthy. that is simply class warfare and something that should be beneath you.

taxing the wealthy estates to pay down the national debt is irresponsible. first, they have already been taxed. taxing them for political retribution (so the GOP can no longer use is as an excuse to cut social services) has to be the most heinous idea i've ever heard. you essentially want to use taxes to punish a political party. if you want to lower the national debt, how about cutting spending, cutting waste etc?
 
Darla said:
I'm sure you think this means something. Thomas Paine. Ground Rent. Read.
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you need reread what i've posted on this subject. reading that would not change my opinion, nor does it alter the fact it was written before income taxes and the other myriad taxes we have. learn.
 
It's difficult to read for one example, Benjamin Franklin, and not come away with the obvious fact that he was speaking of confiscation. Just because it wasn't called "income tax" yet, is quite irrelevant. And any reading of the founders makes it clear they feared inherited wealth and were very open and in fact discussed ways of preventing it from being inherited.
 
I think this issue has gotten lost in a bunch of rhetoric. I strongly support a strong, and in fact, outright confiscatory estate tax. But not on small or medium of even large estates. I am not talking about someone's 1 million dollar home, or 10 million dollar estate. I am talking about the kind of estates passed down that have created a small number of families who own our political system and are a clear and present danger to democracy.

What's more, today's 1%'ers are the robber barons of yesteryear...the bankers, hedge fund managers, etc. They are going to pass down their new wealth to their descendants and we are racing towards an oligarchy. Nobody cares about your family farm or Aunt Edna's old apartment that turned condo in a now-gentrified area and is worth 3 million.

This is about democracy and our system of government.
 
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