So we live our lives as fully as we can. Some of us are polite enough to set-up our funerals and plots ahead of time (thanks Mom and Dad!) and fulfill our earthly wishes in a well-formed legal document that holds our final ‘will’.
Finally loosed of the surly bonds that tied us to the planet, we go off into whatever metaphysical construct satisfies our dreams; liberated of all earthly pains… except taxes.
Well, it depends on your view and, more correctly, your pocket book, but the government is still quite keen on your vestments after you die. You may have heard of this tax as the estate tax. As that link indicates, it’s on its way to disappearing and thank the maker!
I thought it was so unfair those billionaires who made their fortunes through capitalistic ventures that drew in a little of everyone else’s money to their pocket had to give some of it back when they passed on.
The nerve!
So why should you care about the estate tax? If you are filthy rich, repealing the tax makes your filthier richer. If you are not rich, this repeal is really sneaky. At face value, it seems to make no difference to your life what-so-ever. However, we are talking $290 billion over 10 years, according to the Washington Post, that our money savvy government is going to have to replace.
I mean, you did notice we were in a deficit right?
I’d better make a societal point outside of deficit, because, let’s face it, we’re used to being in debt. What’s another 1/4 trillion?
Well, let’s drop all the programs the government uses tax money to run for you and I anyways. It’s all to slippery to argue how we could narrow our waistlines in the government to help make up for that.
Directly, the nations’ charity organizations stand to loose quite a bit of money over the deal. I particularly liked this quote from the House Minority Leader, Nancy Polosi.
“This is reverse Robin Hood,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “We’re taking money from the middle class and giving it to the super-rich.”
I’m not sure I see how the money is taken from the middle class other then when a $290 billion dollar deficit needs to be accounted for in the budget, the large semi-happy group in the middle is a nice sized target of future taxes.
But let’s not loose site of the charities, who aren’t going to complain one way or another. You see, charities are about two things that sound kind of funny when you put them together. Helping and money.
I can’t chastise charities too much… who am I kidding, I sure as hell can. You won’t hear charities complaining about a repeal that stands to loose them millions because you don’t gain rich and powerful fans by supporting a tax aimed right at your friends prime beef. Since charity is becoming the euphemistic word for rich tax shelter now, you can see why they’d be reluctant to speak out loud.
I understand the need for money to keep these things going, but this is the slippery slope argument that generates a wealth of ethically curious predicaments. I’ll wait for actual proof before I start yelling moral erosion, but it’s not like I make this stuff up all on my own.
Wait wait wait. So I support taxing death?
Never underestimate the power of a good rhetorical question, especially when it’s a red herring.
“The death of a family member should not be a taxable event, period,” said Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.), the bill’s sponsor.
And who, in their good natured well-informed minds, would support taxing death?
What the hell makes death so sacred? Do you see the poorly drawn line here? I never thought I could argue for a tax, but here awaits a nice pregnant opportunity.
This argument plays to your minds sense of fairness. Death is a sad and horrible process that strikes you with agony and pain, and now taxes!
It’s not like a few IRS suits in shades holding a Men in Black issue flashy thingy walk up to you at the funeral, open the casket and remove your beloved ones wallet. But if you are blind to the fact that death is often a financial transfer involving lawyers and taxes regardless of the estate tax, your just blue collar.
It’s not the dying that is taxed, that’s the red herring. It’s the transfer of monies and power to another living person we are taxing here. Don’t worry, if it’s a spouse it goes to, the ‘death’ tax doesn’t rail the poor widow into poverty. Most of her millions will actually make it, we’re talking the transfer to family members or other business partners and friends.
Frankly, when this large sum of money lands into your hands, the government is going to take a chunk. As far as I can tell, any argument against an estate tax is really just an argument against tax. That’s a different discussion.
Since we are in a tax system, these large sums of money shouldn’t be continually wrapped up in a few families. As a new person becomes ridiculously filthy rich, they, too, can participate in America and pay, what I consider, a large acquisition fee.
Here is how I hear the estate tax. “Congratulations! A member of your family or dear friend has passed on giving you more money then a large warehouse of children could count in a lifetime! Since you didn’t really have to do anything other then stay alive and accept, we’d like to see some of this money enter the general circulation again.”
Do the people have a right to this money? Ideally, probably not. If it wasn’t my experience that any accumulator of that large a sum of money didn’t destroy a few, if not several, citizens lives on the way up the ladder, I’d say hands off.
The truth is, businesses and the wealthy have underpaid and under treated the soil of this nation in a way that requires some fertilizer. You farmed the hell out of this land and turned a profit! Congratulations.. now, the soil needs a little rejuvenation.. so.. do you mind?
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