Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

How could it not have already been taxed? s it from before there was income tax? If you're saying it was inherited, wasn't there an inheritance tax then? The silver lining to a solid (100%) inheritance tax- assuming we could make it retroactive- is we'd put the fucking Kennedys on the street. Turn the compound into condos I say.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Because the state, in the exercise of its common law sovereign powers, has chosen to honor them. It was not always the case that the sovereign did, however. And the change, when it came about, came about in exchange for the imposition of an excise on the deceased's property passing under a will.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Wait- so if i give you 100$ to put in my casket at my funeral you're going to keep it? You're the kind of lawyer who gets the jokes going.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Only if you view the estate tax as a second income tax. If you view it as an excise, then no, they aren't. And if the whackadoos in Congress manage to repeal the estate tax permanently, then they escape entirely.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Is this true? That the there was a quid pro quo?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

An inheritance tax is not an income tax. And inherited money is not subject to income tax. Surely this isn't a complex concept for you, Hank. Club is generally obtuse. I personally think it's deliberate, to replace his lack of debating skills. You I expect better from.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I had thought, but maybe this died in committee or something, that after the estate tax went away, there wasn't going to be a step-up (the person inheriting would have the same basis as the decedent). It would not surprise me if this had been pork-traded out.

Given the size of the excise tax, I don't have so much of a problem with the step-up in value. If they didn't get the step-up, I would think you would have to value the estate's assets at their adjusted basis instead of current market value, and that seems screwy, because if something appreciated enough, it seems like even if you sold it, it's possible that between cap gains and the estate tax you would end up having to pay out of pocket.

Ignoring the exclusion, of course.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Perhaps, but unlike you, I'd declare it as income.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Are you still upset that I forgot to put you on one of my lists?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Yep. Go back to the Chronicles if you really want to research the answer. Start with the Statute of Wills.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Yes. I cried, you know.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

But they're both taxed, right? Geez T. you can't be so picky if people try and talk about tax with you. You'll scare everyone away. Like when Atticus used to talk about IP law I never corrected his mistakes because it could have had a chilling effect.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I took it as a gift. That's not taxable, right?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Well you learn something new everyday. This is very interesting. I may have to reassess my position.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Fuck theories, I'll go with the practical exercise of my second amendment rights to counterbalance your sickening style of marxism. That's a wealth protection plan I endorse with both barrels!

Interesting Idea
 

• Patrick Byrne, a 42-year-old bear of a man who bristles with ideas that have made him rich and restless, has an idea that can provide a new desktop computer for every student in America without costing taxpayers a new nickel. Or it could provide 300,000 new $40,000-a-year teachers without any increase in taxes.
  
  His idea — call it The 65 Percent Solution — is politically delicious because it unites parents, taxpayers and teachers while, he hopes, sowing dissension in the ranks of the teachers unions, which he considers the principal institutional impediment to improving primary and secondary education.
  
  The idea, which will face its first referendum in Arizona, is to require that 65 percent of every school district's education operational budget be spent on classroom instruction. On, that is, teachers and pupils, not bureaucracy.
  
  Nationally, 61.5 percent of education operational budgets reach the classrooms. Why make a fuss about 3.5 percent? Because it amounts to $13 billion. Only four states (Utah, Tennessee, New York, Maine) spend at least 65 percent of their budgets in classrooms. Fifteen states spend less than 60 percent. The worst jurisdiction — Washington, D.C., of course — spends less than 50 percent.
  
  Under the 65 percent rule, Arizona, which spends 56.8 percent in classrooms, could use its $451 million transfer to classrooms to buy 1.5 million computers or to hire 11,275 teachers. California (61.7 percent) could use its $1.5 billion transfer to buy 5 million computers or to hire 37,500 teachers. Illinois (59.5 percent) would transfer $906 million to classrooms (3 million computers or 22,650 new teachers). To see how much money would flow into your state's classrooms, go to firstclasseducation.org. Byrne, who lives in Utah and has made a bundle in various business ventures, was once advised by Warren Buffett to pretend he is a batter at the plate with no one calling balls and strikes, so he can wait for a perfect pitch — a perfect idea. The 65 Percent Solution is perfect because it wins 80-plus percent support in polls, and torments people Byrne thinks should be tormented.
  
  Buffett also advised him to ask himself this: If you had a silver bullet, what competitor would you shoot, and why? Byrne says he would shoot the National Education Association — the largest teachers union.
  
  Byrne is pugnacious — after graduating from Dartmouth, studying moral philosophy at Cambridge and earning a Stanford Ph.D., he tried a boxing career — and relishes the prospect of the 65 percent requirement pitting teachers against other union members who are in the education bureaucracy. "Educrats," he says, "have become what city hall was 50 or 60 years ago" — dens of patronage and corruption.
  
  The 65 Percent Solution solves the misallocation of resources, but there is scant evidence that increasing financial inputs will, by itself, increase a school's cognitive outputs. Or that a small reduction in class sizes accomplishes much. Or that adding thousands of new teachers would do as much good as firing thousands of tenured incompetents.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp

Interesting Idea
 

Aren't you reading the Statute of Wills and stuff? I actually admired you there for a minute or two.

Also, if someone could remind me why we are not allowed to make changes to English common law on property, that would be very helpful.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Why should it be different because you worked on a family business as opposed to your own private business. Say you work really hard at your own law practice. Get rich. Die. But your kids aren't lawyers, so all the money you made gets taxed by the estate tax. Compare with, you work really hard, but your kids are lawyers, and work for your firm so it's a "family business." You die, but they escape estate tax?

Basically your argument (or the general one) comes down to teh fact that some families tie up their assets in illiquid form (i.e., a family business). Why should that entitle them to a break? Perhaps we should have some solicitude that would allow payment of taxes over time, with a suitably high interest rate, but extend that option to every estate and make it fair.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Not twice though. Club claims it's wrong to tax it twice, because it's formerly been taxed as income. Putting aside the merits of the argument, it's factually untrue. Many estates have sizable untaxed gains. Note that this is particularly likely to be true for houses, which many old people keep to death so that the kid gets a step up in basis.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

The repeal for 2010 drops the step-up in basis. I think most repeal proposals retain that. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. At least not too much.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

re: club's "never tax twice!!" -- Well, yeah, but that's always true in personal situations -- only businesses get deductions for what they pay people. I've paid tax on the money I pay for food, but yet there will be sales tax on that food, and the profit on the food will be taxed.

Plus your point, which is much more important.

Presumably club would have the inheritor get the property at the low basis and then they would pay cap gains if they sold it; of course, he is no doubt strongly anti-cap gains taxation. He seemed unaware of that step-up thing. I'm hoping he's off somewhere getting, you know, the actual facts (not just the propaganda) and reconsidering in light of them.

Slow day for most of you? I was in meeting all days, and check out the posts and you guys went nuts.

1) As far as median incomes in the US since 1970, before I research that I stand by my statement that free trade benefits a country. Can anyone show me an example of when restrictive trade policies have benefited a nation. I have shown you many examples of when free trade policies have benefitted nations and when restrictive trade policies have hurt nations. Can this alleged drop in individual incomes since 1970 be directly tied to free trade policies?

2) The Estate Tax. There are no property rights when it comes to taxes. Taxes always infringe on property rights. Taxes are a necessary evil. Tax policy should always be viewed from how to minimize the damage to the economy. Or how to help the economy. In other words bring the most benefits to the most people. No one has every demonstrated to me how the estate tax harms the economy our discourages productivity. Yet other taxes that have to be increased to compensate for the loss of the estate tax, do hurt the economy. My party should focus on cutting taxes that do the most damage to the economy, and forget this Estate tax thing. It is a waste of political capital.

3) I like Patrick Byrne's idea.

Always helps to declare a position before researching it.

Well, there was Japan. And now there is China. And Airbus hasn't been doing too badly lately either.


And no one disputes that this is the case. Sometimes medicine helps, sometimes it hurts. Depends on the dosage, and the illness, and the patient. And your own party has never been a pure free trade party, in part for these reasons and in part for reasons of electoral politics.

The situation of China (and India) presents an unprecedented historical event -- 2/3 of the world's population being brought into the industrial economy. Your confidence that the rules of free trade will result in 2 billion people eventually demanding levels of pay similar to those in more industrialized, less populous countries is interesting. But not based on historical precedent. (Note: China's demographic time-bomb may make this result more likely, though India doesn't share that problem.)


Can you show that it is not? You have spouted off again and again about economics and yet you relied on your "reading" that failed to illuminate a basic fact for you. So now you say "well, can you show me that this basic fact is directly tied to what I'm talking about" -- as if any economic event can be so easily tied to one factor. That's absurd.

The managed economy argument has been highly disputed. The countries with the highest growth rates are free traders. It has been argued that if Japan had opened its economy more it would have grown even faster in the 70s and wouldn't have hit such drastic problems in the late 80s. Singapore and Hong Kong, which had the freest markets in Asia, had by far the biggest growth rates. As far as Airbus, sometimes government protected businesses pay off, but more often than not they hurt the country that nationalizes them. To drive this point home, all the countrys that have invested in Airbus are not doing that well right now. And I don't think Airbus hasn't come even close to returning the tax revenue to the sponsoring countries that have subsidized airbus. It is possilble that even China opened up its country more that they could reach the 15% growth rates of the tigers of the 1970s.




"But not based on historical precedent - you already said there was no precedent. You talk like you think economics is a zero sum game. If China and India generate the wealth, why can't they reap the reward? China's demographic time bomb (the ageing of its population) could be a problem.




I have no idea what you mean by this. The US economy grew during this period you claim median incomes decreased. What caused the economy to grow? What caused median income decrease? I don't see strong connection here. Some theories. But as far as the growth in Chile, you can pick the specific policies and show how they directly improved economic growth. This goes for many other countries. What is so absurd? Are you really trying to suggest that if the US had closed its eononmy that median individual incomes would have increased and that the overall growth rate would not have been affected?

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me how cutting the estate tax will significanlty benefit the economy, and where the lost tax cuts in other areas of the economy or increased deficits (since we are in deficits it has to be one or the other) will not hurt the economy.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I never said taxed as income. For most people, the largest asset in an estate is a home, which has been taxed at the time of purchase. But if we are going to treat disposition by inheritance like every other transfer of property, then I guess some sort of tax on transfer is appropriate. Query though, why we don't tax the recipient based on value of the property at the time it is acquired. That would seem to be consistent with Ty's (not Wonk's) theory for the tax in the first place.

I don't think anyone was making that claim. .

Given the narrow focus of the estate tax I don't think it has an impact one way or the other. The efficiency gain is simply from eliminating the lawyers who get paid to help their clients avoid/minimize their tax liability.

The main issue with the estate tax is a moral one, that is how much control should the deceased have over the disposition of their assets.

BTW, increasing the estate tax would likely have a salutary effect on the economy, by forcing people to spend like it's going out of style (and that's 50% more spending that their inheritors would engage in). That or they'd all buy annuities so nothing would be left over.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Houses aren't "taxed" at the time of purchase, other than a recordation tax (which is pretty low).

Hey, if you want to get rid of the estate tax, then just charge the inheritiance to the income of the recipient. But I don't think that really solves any of your concerns--it's still a tax on something that you claim was previously taxed.

Morality? OK. What about taxing Joe that makes twenty five thousand a year so he can't send his kid to college. Or so Joe can't afford health insurance. Between that and taxing an estate so frank only inherits one million as opposed to two million. As far as I am concerned morality argues for the inheritance tax.

In addition, if Frank does not think he is going to inherit a lot of money, that forces him to plan for his retirement thereby forcing him to be a productive part of the economy. And as far as people spending their inheritance - I don't buy it. If the inheritance tax is 50% as oppossed to nothing, I have to save even more money so I can leave the amount of money that I want to my children.

The more you tax Frank, the less you tax Joe, which is more moral, and better for the economy. Morality argues for taxing the rich more, it is just economic practicality that argues against it. The problem with overtaxing the rich is that it also, in the long run, hurts the poor. But there is nothing fair about charging Bill Gates the same percentage of his income as you tax an employee at Wal Mart. Taxes suck and should be avoided wherever possible. But all things being even taxes on the poor are worse than taxes on the rich.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Once you're dead, you have no rights. You're dead. We give effect to the wishes of dead people for different reasons, but not because the dead person has rights.

I didn't say you needed to come up with a moral basis against anything -- you made a statement about property rights that was silly.

Government doesn't have a moral right to collect taxes, except that government needs to exist for all sorts of moral reasons, and taxes are necessary for this to happen.

In the tradition of our founding fathers who took up arms to oppose the greivous sins of the poisonous taxation, the only morality that the free citizen-patriots of this once god-fearing and blessed nation should apply to the estate tax or the progressive income tax or the AMT is the morality of the second amendment.

That morality is available to the rich and poor alike.

The only tax I willingly pay is a tithe to the church, for the lord sits above all of satan's minions who preach the god-less marxist blasphemy of the taxation of man by man.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

In the days of heavanly glory, before the serpent invaded the garden of eden, there was no government and the highest form of earthly morality reigned. Government is the result of the sins of Adam and Eve and has no moral basis. Taxation is the amorality of the demonic serpent.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

So you believe that all taxes should be ended? Then how would we pay for the invasion of Iraq, all that censorship of the media, and the jailing of woman who have abortions and the execution of abortion doctors?

Me too. I suspect that if you want to drill down to find government waste, you'll find a lot of it in local governments, like school districts. It's hard to find qualified officials to run these governments, and it's hard for voters to pay attention to make sure they work right. I'm sure there's waste in my local school district, but who has the time to pay attention to that stuff?

That said, I'd like to know where the 65% number came from, and whether it's a good line to draw.

The goal of economic "science" is to increase the prosperity of the society in question. Or as I like to say, increase as much as possible the "utils" in the society. You don't choose one economic policy over another because it is moral, you choose it because it brings the most "utils". Taxes suck because they decrease the prosperity of the society in question. However, some taxes are necessary because what they are used for increase the utils to a society more than they decreased utils caused by the taxes. A person that makes thirty thousand a year, an increase in prosperity of $2000, creates a lot more utitlity for that person, than an increase of prosperity of $1 billion to Bill Gates. So taxing the rich dimishes the amount of utility in a society less than taxing the poor. Free market economics are better than socialist economics because it brings more utils to the society. Once economists start talking about morality beyond utility they almost always screw it up. Like the flat tax is more moral than a progressive tax - Not. The only valid argument for the flat tax would be that, overall, it would benefit the society more.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I'm not sure I had a theory, and certainly I would hesitate to say anything different from my elder and better, Wonk.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I thought you were justifying the tax on the recipient because they didn't earn it?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

My concern is more with my conception of property rights than double taxation.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

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