Iriemon

No, an inheritance tax is a tax upon unearned income received by the beneficiary.

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Matthew 5:9

ARealConservative

If the husband works full time and the wife stays home to raise kids - calling this death tax "unearned income" is preposterous.

Maybe she didn't work directly for it - but she certainly has more right to the "unearned income" then the voting public who wishes to steal it from her.

Mr. X

I dislike this kind of class warfare rhetoric. Sure Paris Hilton is an obnoxious and spoiled young lady, but shouldn't her parents decide what is left to her rather than you or I?

What you neglect to take into your calculations is that the $2 million dollar asset that is in place for the next three years. It will then revert to a $1 million amount. This amount is also on the gross estate, not just what's in the bank account and also includes any life insurance payments. It's not hard to imagine a middle class family with a home or business and having life insurance shelling out on this tax. And it's not just the federal government, many states have a tax that will be included on top of this.

Whether the heirs have earned the money or not is irrelevant. It's not our place to decide what others should leave to their families.

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Hell is other people.

Iriemon

Since a wife is determined to own property jointly with her husband, there is no transfer on death and a wife has never been subjected to an inheritance tax.

Iriemon

But it is our place to decide whether a transfer or assets to someone who did not earn them should or should be subject to a tax, just as a transfer of assetsto soeone who earned them is.

ARealConservative

fine - switch wife - with the sister of the deceased wife that stayed home with the kids.

You go to great lengths to ignore the concept behind an analogy.

Iriemon

If you pay your sister for taking care of your kids, those payments are taxable income. Transfers of assets to non-spousal family members are a taxable event, and should be IMO.

rathi

Not if the alternative is going to some working man and telling him what do with the money that he just earned. Taxable income has to come from somewhere, better those who deserve it less.


A 2 parent family gets 4 million before they have to pay taxes. 4 million in assets is not middle class.

They can leave whatever they wish, nobody is telling them what to leave.

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He'd be right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an axe into somebody's face.

Mr. X

I disagree with your reasoning. I will never like the idea of singling someone out and saying they don't deserve to have what they do. And I seriously doubt the middle class, working people of America have felt a great weight lifted from their shoulders because someone is paying the inheritance tax.

And because I'm against the inheritance tax does not mean that I'm for the rest of the tax system. I've said it before; the fairest and most equitable tax system would be a flat rate tax. Addressing wasteful spending and ineffective government policies and programs would go a lot further towards reducing the tax burden on the working class.

Patrickt

Can someone give me an example of taxes coming down because tax revenues went up? It doesn't work that way. I don't pay one penny more in income tax because most people in the U.S. don't pay income tax. If, by some miracle, they started paying my taxes would stay the same and politicians would spend more.

There is absolutely no connection between what the government needs and what they take.

For those, or the one, who was concerned about the debt baby boomers had run up, forget out it. It's nothing compared to what they'll run up in the next few years when they quit working and aren't prepared to take care of themselves. BTW, I'm not a baby boomer. I recently asked a baby boomer who is living large what he'd done to put something away for retirement. The response was, "Why should I? I'll get social security."