Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Ok, I'm curious. Is this here because you are *for* the death tax, or are you actually recognizing that the right is doing something, well, right?

Yea, I would say that less than a WEEK after the biggest natural disaster in history is a poor time to focus on protecting the estates of millionaires.

Crappy as it may be, politics goes on. I say we use this as a reason to violently overthrow the government.

It isn't about protecting the estates of millionaires only. It is also about protecting owners of small family run businesses and farms. THIS I know for a fact. My grandmother passed away last year and the family farm which has been in my family for about 100 years has a butt-load of taxes with it. We are having to sell off large portions of it to keep it.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts that none of that is federal estate tax though.

Just to clarify, I would still support killing the federal estate tax, it is double taxation (as I see it) but I would not equate it with helping out small farms and family businesses, nonsense, it will help out very rich people, but very rich people dont deserve a special tax just because they are very rich.

That said, tricky time to be cutting any taxes when the deficit is 4 googol.

Actually its not mostly "untaxed transfer of wealth" - it is *some* but not *most* - not even half.

"Furthermore, such unrealized, untaxed capital gains make up more than one-third of the average estate, according to a study by economists James Poterba of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Weisbenner, who was on the staff of the Federal Reserve Board when the study was published in 2000. ... Their study estimated that unrealized capital gains made up 36.3 percent of the value of all estates in 1998. That would make the "double tax" claim 63.7 percent true, and just over one-third false. ... For very large estates it is mostly false. The study also found that estates worth more than $10 million were 56.4 percent made up of unrealized, untaxed capital gains."

So the larger the estate the less the "double tax" thing is valid, but still in ALL estates I would venture some portion is double taxed.

"It is true that some portion of a taxable estate might be made up of cash that was taxed before, when it was earned as income. But many estates are made up of stocks, bonds, real estate or other holdings that have appreciated greatly in value over the lifetime of the person who owned them. The owner didn't pay taxes on that profit during his or her lifetime because they weren't sold and the profits weren't turned into cash, or "realized."

I also think these numbers are sort of backwards (or I dont understand it) when it comes to real estate. The owner is not taxed on the value that appreciates? That is true if you dont count the assessments on real estate. Its taxed not just at sale times but by property taxes which are based on the assessed value, not what you paid. Therefore real estate would skew the numbers further towards the "double tax" being "real".

Overall a lot of it IS INDEED a "double tax".

Good link... I think my f*cking uncles must be trying to screw me out of some farmland! Either that or Kansas is taxing the hell out of the inheritance. Gonna have to do some investigating.

Go FairTax!

It seems like you guys just glossed over my idea about overthrowing the government.

I'm a little hurt by that.