If You’re Rich, 2010 Will Be a Great Year to Die
Topic: Beltway Outsider, Government in My Backyard (GIMBY)18. December 2009 |
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So explains the New York Times’ Carl Hulse: the estate tax on assets passed on to heirs will expire completely starting Jan. 1. Then, it will return at a 55 percent rate in 2011 for those with more than one million worth of assets. The estate or “death tax,” as its Republican detractors call it, is currently set at a 45 percent rate and it only kicks in if you have assets of at least $3.5 million.
Hulse ably answers questions of “huh?” and “What’s going on here?” The very short answer is that the one-year death of the death tax is a quirk of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. The estate tax generates $25 billion a year in revenue for the federal government, which is trillions in debt. Annual revenues from the tax are more than what the Agricultural Dept. is spending on recession-based increases in food stamps. Yet I’ve not heard a single deficit hawk taking to the Senate floor protesting the tax’s one-year demise. Maybe it’s just impolite for politicians to discuss the ailing rich.
understandinggov.org
The millionaire next door is more common than you think. Kids are literally “selling the farm (or parent’s home or business)” in order to pay this horrible tax on death. You mentioned “recession based increases in food stamps” as if welfare is a RIGHT—and who’s money is it anyway? It doesn’t belong to the government. You would have done well in the old Soviet Union where the government owned EVERYTHING and completely trampled liberty.
comment at 13. January 2010