The Death Tax Nonsense says much about the Radical Right. Here is an issue that concerns a tiny minority of the richest Americans. Still, the Radical Right spins it — as they do all taxes — as something to frighten everyone with. This issue alone would show how out of touch Republicans are with the majority and how their true constituency is Wealth (though many of the super-rich see the fairness of the tax). It makes “the party of ideas” look like the vandals sacking Rome. mjh
Sioux City Journal: Grassley sees hurricane recovery costing up to $200 billion
“On the estate tax, it wouldn’t surprise me if nothing is going to happen in the year 2005,” said [Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa]. “It’s a little unseemly to be talking about eliminating the estate tax at a time when people are suffering.”
Repeal/Reform of the Estate Tax – Center for American Progress
At the core of this debate is a simple American principle: we do not believe that because of accidents of birth one group should have unrivaled economic power. Efforts to completely or virtually eliminate estate taxes on even the nation’s most wealthy estates offend basic American values that have long held that economic success should depend on hard work, entrepreneurial spirit and merit rather than one’s original station in life. In the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Such inherited economic power is as inconsistent with the ideals of this generation as inherited political power was inconsistent with the ideals of the generation which established our government.” …
Currently, less than 1 percent of estates pay any tax—with the vast majority of the population owing nothing. In 2004, this translated into an estimated 18,800 estates.[4] Under current law, this number will decline even further as the estate tax exemption rises. By 2009 (when the law will allow a couple to pass $7 million and an individual to pass $3.5 million of any estate to their heirs tax free), less than 0.3 percent of estates will owe any tax.
Mt. Rushmore and a History of the Estate Tax by Jim Grote
It is ironic in a country as devoted to individual liberty and free enterprise as ours that the most ardent promoters of a federal estate tax have been some of our fiercest patriots and richest capitalists: Thomas Paine, Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Buffet to name a few. Reviewing the thinking of these four men can only add clarity to the current ideological debate over estate tax reform. One might think of these gentlemen as comprising the Mount Rushmore of the estate tax edifice.
FairEconomy.org – A History of the Estate Tax
Many Progressive Era (1900-1918) reforms resulted from this period, such as: child labor laws, voting rights for women, and the establishment of an income tax, which required the extraordinary step of amending the constitution. The estate tax was another one of these reforms. Those who made the case for the estate tax advanced arguments that are vital to the contemporary debate. …
A second belief was that society played a significant role in the creation of individual wealth and therefore had some claim upon the wealth of the very rich. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed a federal inheritance tax, saying, “The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.” Roosevelt recognized that wealthy citizens benefitted particularly from government protection of wealth and property rights.