2centsworth.info

There was an interesting editorial in the July 27th USA Today talking about the attempt by the Republicans to do away with what they call the “Death Tax” and what the rest of us know as the Estate Tax. Basically, it is a tax on inherited wealth.

Doing away with it was on the top of GW’s legislative agenda from the beginning of his first term. (After all, George Senior is getting on in years and repealing the estate tax will save GW millions of dollars when GH kicks the bucket.)

The main Republican tactic has been to give the Estate Tax an unattractive name… After all, who could be in favor of the Death Tax? And to get everybody all teary-eyed with the thought of hundreds of “family farms” being sold because of this huge tax burden imposed by the evil IRS and the Death Tax.

The USA Today editorial was quoting from an analysis done by FactCheck.org and itemized some rather interesting facts:

• Only 1% of all the estates settled in 2003 paid any “Death Tax”
• Of the 18,000 estates that did pay “Death Tax” in 2003 only 340 were a single farm or small business
• Eliminating the “Death Tax” will cost the Treasury $196 billion over the next ten years (Which will have to be paid by other less wealthy taxpayers or will result in a commensurate increase in our already jaw-dropping national debt…)
• Under the current Estate Tax, estates worth between $1 million and $2 million only pay %4.7

The bottom line is that repealing the “Death Tax” will actually hurt 99% of the population and will only benefit the richest 1% of the population which just happens to include the President, every member of his cabinet, and a substantial fraction of “our” Senators and Representatives.

One last quote from the USA Today editorial “The Senate measure, which is still being negotiated, would tax inherited wealth of millions of dollars at a lower rate than what a teacher pays on a $70,000 annual salary. It would also give inherited wealth a more privileged status than money made from hard work or putting capital at risk.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2005 at 10:51 am and is filed under Corruption, Government, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.