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which best describes your view of the inheritance tax?

which best describes your view of the inheritance tax?


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So the definition of income doesn't fit your premise and you want to change it? Could that be because there exists no logical premise to unfairly treat differing levels of accumulation with punitive taxes? Methinks so. In other words you are fine with preferential treatment as long as it is punitive toward people who you think "have too much".
The few having excessive wealth is not good, not in the eyes of the masses...this must be respected...
IMO, the excessive wealth is caused by overcharging for goods and services , again, not good.
I favor a reasonable tax on capital gains (30% above $100000; 15% below the arbitrary 100K $) and NO tax on an inheritance.
 
You can stop the elitism at any time. I worked in radio and got to know many lawmakers both state and national. I do know what I am talking about.

As I see it, Haymarket expresses facts. Others, including me, express opinions (there is a difference).
"Knowing people" is not enough, what counts is doing, as Haymarket does (and I do not agree with him 100%).
 
from cpwill

As you well know, and your post clearly indicates this, these are two separate taxes paid by two separate entities. A corporation is a legal entity with its own obligations and responsibilities of taxation. A shareholder is a different entity with its own obligations and responsibilities of taxation. To attempt to add both as if they both are paid by the same entity is factually wrong and intellectually fraudulent.

from the wikipedia entry on corporations previously cited here many times in many threads



We have been through this time and time and time again in thread after thread after thread. The right will will not give up its false claim to this myth of double taxation no matter how many times reality is pointed out to them. You, attempting to add numbers together in this way, underlines that point yet again.



And I have repeatedly said that I want ALL Americans to pay 5 points more on their federal income tax and that includes the demonized 47% created by the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the Republicans in both houses of Congress who provided 93% of the YES votes to create these non taxpayers.

As to your Greater Risk- Greater Reward..... in a word sir - BALONEY. Explain to the millions of people who have lost their employment over the last few years how



Risk is there for many workers and evidence of losing jobs, reductions in salary, and reductions in benefits shows that precious little is "guaranteed" to use your word. Workers have not only lost all that but pensions also that they counted on. They took a RISK with a particular employer and they lost.



So if we take your belief and follow it , should we then also apply discriminatory and preferential tax rates to Americans who also take huge risks in the investment they made in their careers? Should we give a preferential and discriminatory tax rate to the fire fighter because RISK is a greater part of their job than that a grocery clerk?
Should we give a preferential and discriminatory tax rate to the police officer because RISK is a greater part of their job than that of a grade school teacher?

Where does this public subsidizing of private RISK stop? Or are you unfairly limiting your concept of RISK to only money from investors and ignoring the real RISK many take constantly in their choice of careers and in the daily performance of their jobs?

Where is the conservative love for "small government" that stays out of the lives of American citizens? You clearly want the government to subsidize the investor by giving them preferential and discriminatory rates which subsidize their risk and investment. Its about time the conservative live up to their mantra of getting government out of the lives of citizens and this is a place to begin. You talk about FAIR and FAIRNESS but subsidizing the investor and their risk is hardly FAIR when we do not subsidize the worker and the risk they take with their employment and jobs. That is not FAIRNESS - it is discrimination based on a source of income which we know disproportionately benefits the upper tier earner over average working people. That is the opposite of FAIR. It is clear and obvious DISCRIMINATION and the awarding of PREFERENCES and a perfect example of the Golden Rule as in those with the gold make the rules.

Your case 4 with Joe seems to have placed you on the same road to fantasy land that others have attempted to travel down complaining about bowls of oatmeal and gifts of books. Parents educating children, feeding children, raising children - the law deals with that in the current tax laws. Gifts are deal with also.

So Joe and his educational investment were worth more than community college costs. That is simply one of the variances of life and we accept that. Again, we know the difference between an outright inheritance and tranfer of wealth in millions of dollars from one person to another and that of a gift of paying for education. Lets not pretend we don't. That sort of things is easy to deal with in legislation and I do it all the time.

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.

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.

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.



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.
 
Lost in all the diversion about taxes on dividends is an undeniable fact

the same entity (federal government) gets two cuts at the same pot of money and there is no transfers of that money that involve any additional exchange of value

If I explain it to you for the twenty-second time, will it then sink in? How about the fifty-fifth time? Do you think that would make the difference?

There are only three entities who can tax - federal government, state government and local government. When money changes ownership it is taxed over and over and over and over and over by government. The same money is taxed again and again and again and again when it changes owners. This is then nature of the game. This is simply the way it is. This is reality.

You brought up this so called "exchange of value" a few days ago and I repeatedly challenged you to tell us where this rule was coming from that you could only tax if you had some sort of "exchange of value" whatever that means to you in the first place. Despite request after request you were impotent to explain it but simply went on using it like repeating a mantra that you had memorized by rote.

Will today be the day when you finally reveal where this law of exchange of value comes from and why we should all defer to it?
 
I don't think that there should be an inheritance tax. That money was already taxed by the government at the normal rate while the wealthy person was alive. It's wrong to double tax the same wealth because it's transferring hands.
 
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.
 
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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?

no, but I expect you to respond to, rather than ignore, facts which directly contradict your claims. well, that's not necessarily true... but you should.

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.

helped you out there by highlighting your problem.

According to the IRS, someone making a million in wages actually pays an effective rate of a good bit less than that, and even if all $1 million of that was in capital gains, they would still be paying an effective rate a good bit more than Joe Schmoe making $60K.

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.

again, as long as you continue to insist on talking about nominal rather than effective tax rates, you are arguing about situations that do not exist.

The person who inherits the same one million dollars is hit with a tax rate of 0%.

and thank goodness.

That is simply reality from the IRS itself

here is the simple reality from the IRS itself:

Average_Tax_Rates.png


when you are ready to deal with that reality, you let us know.

to deny it is to deny reality and all the spin or analysis in the world does not change that.

I agree.

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.

what a fascinating claim. So - according to your "money going into a persons' pocket" rule - if my uncles die and my young cousins inherit his small business, they will owe taxes only on the money in the bank accounts plus profits for that year? :)


of course not. because you aren't after money. you are after wealth; but you refuse to provide an actual, coherent dividing line. probably at this point because you have come to the realization that your position is emotionally satisfying, but logically untenable.

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.

what another fascinating claim. so if the heirs are minors then they pay no estate tax?


what does it say about the estate tax that, in order to defend it, you have to pretend it is something it is not?

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.

yawn. so your response to my urging you to drop pretenses and accept effective tax rates as those that actually exist in the real world is to divert?

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.

income taxes, yes. but you continue to insist on confusing the two. Though if you want to go to the polls....

68% of Americans favor abolishing the estate tax, and consider the estate tax to be the "least fair" of all federal taxes
 
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cp -

every case of someone filing income tax returns is different. Some folks can come up with lots of deductions. Some folks have trouble coming up with anything but their own personal deduction which is rather small.
As such, it makes no sense and does not give an accurate picture to do anything but say anything but this is the official rate without deductions since individual variances would be so wide as to distort the true picture of what is happening to some taxpayers.

I say this for the wage earner.
I say this for the investor with capital gains.
And I say this for the one who inherits.
I am not cherry picking of taking one an not the other. I say this for all three. As such it is indeed a fair way to set up the examples.

I do not care if Romney pays more than most Americans. It is irrelevant to a discussion of discriminatory tax rates and preferential treatment for types of income.
I do not care if people here like Turtle pay more than most Americans. It is irrelevant to a discussion of discriminatory tax rates and preferential treatment for types of income.
Nobody should care if I pay more than most Americans. It is irrelevant to a discussion of discriminatory tax rates and preferential treatment for types of income.

I am not confusing income taxes - as they currently are defined - with capital gains taxes - as they are currently defined - or with estate taxes - as they are currently defined. I am proposing a change in the law for all of these and how they are defined so the overarching rule in the legislation be that we tax all three as income.

Regarding your public opinion poll on the estate tax: I am glad to see those numbers since I myself would be one of those stating that we should abolish the estate tax. I agree that the way it is structured it is unfair.
 
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As I see it, Haymarket expresses facts. Others, including me, express opinions (there is a difference).
"Knowing people" is not enough, what counts is doing, as Haymarket does (and I do not agree with him 100%).
Wrong, Haymarket expresses opinion. The "facts" are hollow numbers massaged to make a point.

The few having excessive wealth is not good, not in the eyes of the masses...this must be respected...
IMO, the excessive wealth is caused by overcharging for goods and services , again, not good.
Money and economics aren't a zero sum game, this statement means nothing without context. "concentrated" wealth does not exist for the purposes of anything other than "spreading the wealth" by force. If the economy grows the money supply expands, if it shrinks the money supply either does so as well or you have inflation(more money than value) but the fact is that one minority of wealthy people doesn't mean anything more than they have a lot of money.
I favor a reasonable tax on capital gains (30% above $100000; 15% below the arbitrary 100K $) and NO tax on an inheritance.
No one cares what someone thinks is reasonable. Capital gains come from already taxed money as do inheritance tax funds, what you must do is find a way to justify the increases which I don't see as possible.
 
Wrong, Haymarket expresses opinion. The "facts" are hollow numbers massaged to make a point.

I have always found the poster known as Haymarket to express a strong opinion but to support it with a volume of facts, data and lots of information from the historical record. His two years of formal collegiate debate certainly shows itself in his style of showing verifiable support for most of what he states as fact.

I just wish everyone here was like that.

oh - he is good looking also. ;):2wave:
 
The question was which best describes your veiw of the inheritance tax?
Since there was no "other" veiw I voted no exempt, tax 35% from get go.
However to describe my veiw on the inheritance tax is simple.
LUCK
If an average or poor person wins the lottery for say 5 or 10 million IRS agents are not far behind to get their share of taxes.
Why then should a person lucky enough to be born rich not pay their share win they get their inheritance??:peace
 
I favor a reasonable tax on capital gains (30% above $100000; 15% below the arbitrary 100K $) and NO tax on an inheritance.

I favor replacing capital gains with an exorbitant transaction tax-- whole percentage points-- on selling securities so that holding and utilizing securities is a more profitable activity than trading them.
 
I favor replacing capital gains with an exorbitant transaction tax-- whole percentage points-- on selling securities so that holding and utilizing securities is a more profitable activity than trading them.
It would have a more logical basis than the current one.
 
The question was which best describes your veiw of the inheritance tax?
Since there was no "other" veiw I voted no exempt, tax 35% from get go.
However to describe my veiw on the inheritance tax is simple.
LUCK
If an average or poor person wins the lottery for say 5 or 10 million IRS agents are not far behind to get their share of taxes.
Why then should a person lucky enough to be born rich not pay their share win they get their inheritance??:peace
that is oozing envy. You are upset that some have luck and some don't. The purpose of government is not to even things out.
 
that is oozing envy. You are upset that some have luck and some don't. The purpose of government is not to even things out.

There goes playing the ENVY CARD again.

Presluc clearly compared winning the lottery with an accident of birth which is just a different lottery win. We tax one - so fairness dictates we tax the other. There was no ENVY in is post.
 
There goes playing the ENVY CARD again.

Presluc clearly compared winning the lottery with an accident of birth which is just a different lottery win. We tax one - so fairness dictates we tax the other. There was no ENVY in is post.

its accurate. when someone whines about someone else being lucky, that is oozing envy. and a lottery win is far different than an inheritance. anyone knows that and can see the difference
 
its accurate. when someone whines about someone else being lucky, that is oozing envy. and a lottery win is far different than an inheritance. anyone knows that and can see the difference

How is making an accurate observation "whining"? Why is disagreeing with your perspective "whining"?

Lets see now - the person who bought a lottery ticket invested in it... so right away that is different than the one who inherits by accident of birth. And then the lottery ticket winner may even have gone through the work of selecting the winning numbers while the one who inherits only got born to the right mommy.

So I guess there is a difference after all in favor of the lottery ticket winner who showed a bit more ingenuity as well as industry. ;)

But I still see no ENVY.
 
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How is making an accurate observation "whining"? Why is disagreeing with your perspective "whining"?

Lets see now - the person who bought a lottery ticket invested in it... so right away that is different than the one who inherits by accident of birth. And then the lottery ticket winner may even have gone through the work of selecting the winning numbers while the one who inherits only got born to the right mommy.

So I guess there is a difference after all in favor of the lottery ticket winner who showed a bit more ingenuity as well as industry. ;)

But I still see no ENVY.

such silly nonsense. a lottery is a wager. winning it is based purely on luck

an inheritance is based solely on the desire of the person who EARNED the money.

and when someone whines that others should be taxed because they are lucky that OOZES ENVY
 
such silly nonsense. a lottery is a wager. winning it is based purely on luck

an inheritance is based solely on the desire of the person who EARNED the money.

and when someone whines that others should be taxed because they are lucky that OOZES ENVY

Filling ones diapers in the right family does not constitute EARNING anything. The one who did earn it (and that is an assumption that may be false on its face) has no right to subvert the laws of the land.

I see no ENVY in anyone wanting a more just national tax policy.
 
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that is oozing envy. You are upset that some have luck and some don't. The purpose of government is not to even things out.

I envy no person nor would I trade places with any person.

The purpose of the government is in fact to even things out.
After all the document states WE THE PEOPLE, not if you're rich never mind.
We the people pay into the government what we can.
Or is this document wrong?:peace
 
its accurate. when someone whines about someone else being lucky, that is oozing envy. and a lottery win is far different than an inheritance. anyone knows that and can see the difference

Here's a history lesson for ya Turtle,
In the 1700's Some King in England decided to have some colonist pay an unfair tax while the Enlish landowners and military got a pass.
The Colonist didn't like that idea they wanted a square deal .
Sound familar, think American Revolutionary War.
Unfair tax was unfair then it still is today.:peace
 
such silly nonsense. a lottery is a wager. winning it is based purely on luck

an inheritance is based solely on the desire of the person who EARNED the money.

and when someone whines that others should be taxed because they are lucky that OOZES ENVY

Really let's get to the heart of the matter.
Hypotedical situation.

I have a will leaving everything I own to my girlfriend.
I go out by a lottery ticket win 10 million ,have a heart attack before I cash in the ticket.
Now my girlfriend inherites everything.
Question, when she cashes in the lottery ticket would she still have to pay taxes on it.
After all she did inherit the 10 million so no inheritace tax right?
Wrong all lottery tickets have taxes taken out. inherited or not.:peace
 
gambling doesn't create anything of value nor does it benefit society as a whole as investment does
Now you're getting down to manipulation of the system, which is what this is all about. If something is deemed "beneficial" (whatever THAT means) then it's OK to fudge things a bit - is that what you're saying?

And what about interest on savings or investments that aren't specifically Corporate investments? If I loan Joe the money to buy a car so he can get to work isn't that beneficial to society? But if I ask and get interest from Joe then I have to report that interest and pay taxes on it at the same rate as earned income, just as I have to pay the full rate on interest income I get from some bank accounts. Not sure I'm seeing a difference in "investment" here.

As for Corporate taxes adding to the taxes paid on dividends, well, the law says C-Corp is a "person" and recently backed that up by giving it First Amendment Rights to contribute to political campaigns. I gotta' tell ya, C-Corp is looking less and less like "investment" and more like Joe every day.
 
I envy no person nor would I trade places with any person.

The purpose of the government is in fact to even things out.
After all the document states WE THE PEOPLE, not if you're rich never mind.
We the people pay into the government what we can.
Or is this document wrong?:peace

that is an excellent point. The very start of the US Constitution tells us why the document was written in giving us the structure and powers of government. Among the purposes is
*** to from a more perfect union
*** to establish justice
*** to insure domestic tranquility
*** to promote the general welfare

As much as right wingers loathe some of those objectives and the programs necessary to achieve them, its right there at the very beginning of the Constitution telling the nation and the world what the governments purpose is.
 
Filling ones diapers in the right family does not constitute EARNING anything. The one who did earn it (and that is an assumption that may be false on its face) has no right to subvert the laws of the land.

I see no ENVY in anyone wanting a more just national tax policy.

there is that envy thing again. You seem to conveniently forget that being born to a wealthy man in no way guarantees you will be in his will. That is what you and the others who are upset that others have more industrious parents seem to miss. The rest of that post is a false appeal to fascism
 
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