An Obvious Solution to the Estate Tax is a SLIDING SCALE

[Freeper]

Mike 03  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Thu Dec-16-10 06:02 PM
Original message
An Obvious Solution to the Estate Tax is a SLIDING SCALE
   
There is a huge gap between the farmer who over the course of decades has built up an estate worth three to five million and wishes to pass it on to his children, versus someone like Warren Buffet who makes billions a year and in his lifetime could not even hope to spend it all.

What is wrong with a modest tax for low estates and a high tax for high estates? It is not in our best interest to tax small family estates at fifty five percent. We should treat them differently than billionaire incomes.

Think of this: A family may have an estate of one million to three million dollars, but that doesn't mean they have an annual income that is stupendous; that estate could have been built over the course of decades.

I am not against the wealthy paying their fair share. I am in favor of the wealthy paying their fair share. But I believe we need to separate out the obscenely wealthy from the family estate that has been built up over years and years from hard work and is not even close to being in the same hemisphere as someone who makes hundreds of millions a year or billions.

There is a difference between the small family business that has amassed two million net worth and the Goldman Sachs exec who gets a hundred million as a yearly bonus.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x23394

Again I ask just how much is a fair share anyway?
I guarantee if we taxed the rich at 99% that still wouldn't be enough for you asshats.
When I was growing up if Billy had a toy that I didn't, my parents didn't break his toy so neither one of us had an expensive toy. They told me that the toy was his and maybe someday I too could have a toy just like that.

AlabamaLibrul  Donating Member  (733 posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Thu Dec-16-10 06:11 PM
Response to Original message
3. Five million dollars, in my opinion, is not a "small family estate". The kid can afford the taxes on
   
their free money.

Then lets tax food stamps and unemployment checks at 55% after all it's free money.

DURHAM D  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Thu Dec-16-10 06:50 PM
Response to Original message
5. blah, blah, blah farmers
   
Edited on Thu Dec-16-10 06:51 PM by DURHAM D
Why are they so sacred? Very few "family farms" hit the several millions of dollars mark and I just can't worry about the ones that do. Everyone else pays taxes why shouldn't farmers. gheez

Two million has been under the exemption for years. Remember to always double the exemption because usually it is a couple leaving an interest to heirs. So in the new "deal" the actual exemption will be $12 million for estates. If its bigger just stick it in a trust.

Just so you know, last year I inherited interest in a family farm. As a business owner I just could not get all worked up over the "paying taxes" anxiety. I finally told one of my siblings to just grow up.

If you were a grown up you would realize that if someone has something it belongs to them, not you, not the govt, it belongs to them.
This whole idea that you are entitled to other people's wealth shows the level of immaturity you are at.

[true_blood]

When I was growing up if Billy had a toy that I didn't, my parents didn't break his toy so neither one of us had an expensive toy. They told me that the toy was his and maybe someday I too could have a toy just like that.

That the difference between us and the red diaper doper babies.

[BattleHymn]

I am not against the wealthy paying their fair share. I am in favor of the wealthy paying their fair share. But I believe we need to separate out the obscenely wealthy from the family estate that has been built up over years and years from hard work and is not even close to being in the same hemisphere as someone who makes hundreds of millions a year or billions.

You utter fools.  Who the hell do you think grew those businesses to be what they are?   

Shit, I wish I knew it was this easy before embarking into life.  Working hard gets you less than the guy who goes around with an OPED (obscene profits electronic detector), and digs a multi-million dollar corporation straight out of the ground.

I bet you all feel like suckers now, too. 

   

[BEG]

Who gets to decide how much is too much?  To DUers it will always be more than they make.

Keep your grubby hands off our money you leeches.

[AllosaursRus]

I am not against the wealthy paying their fair share. I am in favor of the wealthy paying their fair share. But I beDURHAM D  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Thu Dec-16-10 06:50 PM
Response to Original message
5. blah, blah, blah farmers
  
Edited on Thu Dec-16-10 06:51 PM by DURHAM D
Why are they so sacred? Very few "family farms" hit the several millions of dollars mark and I just can't worry about the ones that do. Everyone else pays taxes why shouldn't farmers. gheez

You don't have a clue, ya asshole! Spoken like a true DUmbass that needs to starve to death!!!!

I was born in Kansas ya asshat! The land when most of these family farms were started, 100 or better years ago, was worth around $3/acre! It is nothing more than the market and inflation that now makes most of it worth $15,000/ acre! Any idea what the property taxes are now? Of course you don't!

Did you also know, that the land is now hocked in order to buy tractors and combines that brand new, run around a quarter million bucks? Do ya know a plow horse back in the day cost $150! Of course you don't! You have no idea what it is to work 20 hour days and still worry whether or not your kids are gonna eat!

If a farmer has been fortunate enough, without government intervention, to pay his equipment off, so he can now start seein' a profit, right before he dies from working his hands to the bone, he can now look forward to his kids givin' up the land and equipment in order to pay this stinkin' death tax!

Guess who's goin' to buy his land at 50 cents on the dollar, because of interest and penalties associated with this ****in' death tax, if you don't pay it on time? All the corporations you pricks hate! Exxon, Chevron, BP, etc! They are, after all, the major corporate "farmers" in America now!

The farmer who has been working his ass off, hoping to leave what little wealth he has accumulated over his and his father, and his father's father before him managed to hold onto for their entire lifetimes, is just shit outa luck because leaches you elect and defend to the government have decided to take half of it from him!

Who gets to decide how much is too much?  To DUers it will always be more than they make.

Keep your grubby hands off our money you leeches.

They have no idea what earnings are BEG! They see it as a bottomless pit of free wealth to distribute amongst welfare babies in order to keep those unwilling to work voting them into office!!

ETA:

I apologize for the run on and on sentences! Tryin' out a new pain killer, so have somewhat of a one track mind! At least my back isn't drivin' me nutz, so it must be a good thing! lol!!! Hell, I might even get more than 4 hours sleep tonight!!! Will wonders never cease!!

[Wineslob]

Where's that red button used against Glow Balls Warming deniers when you actually need it?

[LilyB]

Right on, AllosaursRus!

The idea in the OP is not a hideous one.  Warren Buffet could afford to pay more than a family farm.  However, there are real problems with judging the proper percentage for a sliding scale and risking the raising of that percentage by Congress whenever they felt like it.  In the end, it would end up being a nightmare.  I do believe that inheritance taxes are more harmful to the small farmer or middle class family than they have ever been to the wealthy classes that have all kinds of ways to protect their money anyway.  The "death tax" should be abolished on that basis alone.  Yeah, it's a class-based argument, but I  happen to agree that this tax is wrong on its face, so sue me.