from cpwill
yawn. since you decided to start cutting out great swathes of the evidence arrayed against you, I've decided to simplify down to what seem to be the basic key points and answer them.
So much of what you write is meaningless and irrelevant. It has been refuted time after time after time by so many posters that it need not waste further bandwidth. Does you own ego demand that every word you write be examined and replied to?
1. You claim that we are currently subsidizing the wealthy rather than the general lower-and-middle-income earners by taxing capital gains less. Your claim is demonstrated false by the IRS and the CBO, both of whom agree that in fact lower and middle income earners pay tax rates that are below the capital gains rate.
Actually the rules of the IRS rates screams loudly that it is reality. A person who makes a million in wages is hit with the top tax rate of 35% which effectively comes out to 32.6% without any deductions. The person who declares the same one million dollars in their pocket from capital gains is hit with a top tax rate of 15% without any deductions. The person who inherits the same one million dollars is hit with a tax rate of 0%. That is simply reality from the IRS itself. For you to deny it is to deny reality and all the spin or analysis in the world does not change that.
2. You claim that we should tax all transfers of wealth as income... except for the transfers of wealth which you find obviously not right to tax. The dividing line appears to be magical, arbitrary, and exist only in your head. Certainly you have been unable thus far to logically describe it other than to allude to things which "should be obvious." I would say it should be obvious that you don't tax in-family transfers, to include (for example) family owned businesses. That's a "dividing line". It provides a rule (don't tax inter-family transfers) that can be established, followed, and used as logical guidance for revision of the tax code. But simply saying "well, don't tax the stuff that you obviously shouldn't tax" is not logical guidance that can be clearly followed. Instead it is entirely arbitrary and utterly subjective.
As I previously explained to others here before you jumped in, in writing laws - and tax law is no exception - what is done is that you develop a rule, a principle , a guideline that you want to center your language around. In this case - taxing money going into a persons pocket regardless of the source be it wages, capital gains or inheritance as income. That is the guiding principle we follow. Then, you define your terms to fit what you want to construct the law to be. I do this most days of the work week and have done it many many times. You then look at the obvious exceptions that you need to put in the law because of practical concerns, political concerns, economic concerns or many other reasons. In other words - the rule is not a hard and fast rule but is an overarching goal you try to achieve without too many exceptions. Again, this is how laws are written and I do this most days.
The concerns about children and gifts would be some of the things the law would deal with and exclude - as they now do with limits and provisions. The key , of course, is that the exclusions or exceptions should not gut the intent and overarching rule of the bill itself. Your suggested exemption for in family wealth transfers would effectively do just that and it is obvious why you suggest such an exception.
Writing such legislation is an extremely time consuming process and involves many different people providing their input. Legislators, staff, policy experts, lawyers, accountants and the political folks all get a swing at it and all can have a hand in it. It can take months of time to get such a bill on the page.
For you or anyone to think that I can sit down right here and duplicate that sort of effort is ridiculous and simply unrealistic. I have provided you an overarching rule that we should follow and state clearly that there will be practical exceptions as there are in any such legislation.
Addendum: the stuff about the FIT rates and capital gains v "labor" income etc isn't really part of the thread, and merely a continuing divergence from the topic at hand, which is the estate/death/inheritance/etc tax. And the more you pretend to not know the difference between nominal and effective tax rates, the more you appear to be willing to place politically advantageous demagoguery ahead of legitimate policy discussion.
That sort of dishonest effort to limit the discussion to what some people want to limit the discussion to comes up time and time and time again in thread after thread after thread when the topic of taxation is discussed. Taxation in the USA is something that cannot be limited to just one tax paid to one level of government and we all pretend that this tax exists in a universe all by itself and nothing else is of importance or nothing else is going on except the one tax on the board under examination. We see the right want to restrict discussion over and over again.
The fact is a simple one and I have provided numerous respected public opinion polls which demonstrate that somewhere between 60 and 70% of Americans favor increasing taxes upon the wealthy. We then have to look at why the average American is angry about our current system and why the rich are permitted to game the system and how they game the system. And it is clear that the answer is found in the tax codes from the IRS
1- taxing income up to a 35% top rate, while
2- taxing capital gains up to a 15% top rate, while
3- excluding over 5 million dollars of inheritance
This ends up with the system we have the the very wealthy have effectively found a way around the progressive income tax and the higher rates for top income levels.
Any honest discussion of taxation in America is right and correct to include a complete as possible picture of taxes - ALL of them that impact ALL Americans at ALL levels of government.