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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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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 might be both the most moronic comment I have seen on this board posted in seriousness and one of the most disturbing. You have clearly absolutely no clue what the government is about and what it was founded on.
 
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

what are you blathering about? that people like you are going to revolt, or us who pay most of the federal taxes ought to?
 
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.


even a 5 year old can read that as not evening 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

No, stupid....that is the concept behind communism. Which, as you may have noticed, has never, ever succeeded.
 
Moderator's Warning:
There are a few tax threads in the Basement, but this isn't one of them.
 
even a 5 year old can read that as not evening things out.

So you don't approve of the Constitution. Not exactly a shock Turtle - not exactly a shock.

Maybe I would have made you happy if I quoted either the Second or Tenth Amendment? You see my friend, my copy of the Constitution has other stuff in it besides those two.:peace
 
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So you don't approve of the Constitution. Not exactly a shock Turtle - not exactly a shock.

Maybe I would have made you happy if I quoted either the Second or Tenth Amendment? You see my friend, my copy of the Constitution has other stuff in it besides those two.:peace

wow that is perhaps the most dishonest reading of my post one could make

The constitution was not designed to even things out. I suspect I know a bit more about the constitution than most people on this board
 
wow that is perhaps the most dishonest reading of my post one could make

The constitution was not designed to even things out. I suspect I know a bit more about the constitution than most people on this board

The Constitution clearly talks about domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare. While I have never thought of it as evening things out, I think a reasonable person can make a reasonable case for using that phrase within the context of trying to achieve both goals.

I personally believe that government cannot achieve the lofty goal of evening things out. However, I do not think it is unreasonable to associate such a goal with preserving domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare if one has in mind the terrible things that can happen when the disparity between social and economic classes gets out of hand.
 
The Constitution clearly talks about domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare. While I have never thought of it as evening things out, I think a reasonable person can make a reasonable case for using that phrase within the context of trying to achieve both goals.

I personally believe that government cannot achieve the lofty goal of evening things out. However, I do not think it is unreasonable to associate such a goal with preserving domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare if one has in mind the terrible things that can happen when the disparity between social and economic classes gets out of hand.


ah the old appease the losers with the money of the rich or the losers will riot? sorry, the Constitution was never designed to transfer wealth. Indeed many leftwing critics of the constitution rant that it was designed to preserve class inequality
 
ah the old appease the losers with the money of the rich or the losers will riot? sorry, the Constitution was never designed to transfer wealth. Indeed many leftwing critics of the constitution rant that it was designed to preserve class inequality

establish justice
preserve domestic tranquility
promote the general welfare

The guys who wrote that thing strongly disagree with you.
 
establish justice
preserve domestic tranquility
promote the general welfare

The guys who wrote that thing strongly disagree with you.

So you now pretend to speak for people who didn't want anyone but male landowners voting?

none of that suggests income redistribution.
 
So you now pretend to speak for people who didn't want anyone but male landowners voting?

none of that suggests income redistribution.

Actually, they spoke for themselves stating quite clearly that the document was written to establish justice, preserve domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare among other things.
 
Actually, they spoke for themselves stating quite clearly that the document was written to establish justice, preserve domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare among other things.


yeah and try as you might none of those things support welfare socialism, income redistribution by the federal government or the federal government making things "even" for failures, or the unlucky or the untalented
 
I went with exempt the first and 50% thereafter, but and it's a big but, reduce the 50% by 1% for each person working in the inherited estate. 50 employeess no tax, up to 10 Million and then 50% again reduced again by 1% for each employee over teh original 50 etc. Progressive and graduated as overall size merits. This just acknowledges that the private sector is the best place to make jobs and incentivizes it.
 
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.

let me see if I have this straight.

you prefer to ignore reality on the ground, and discount both the CBO and the IRS in favor of what they both say isn't happening because theoretically, possibly, somewhere someone is paying closer to the nominal rate?

:sorry: but no. you argued that we are subsidizing the wealthy by taxing capital gains less. You didn't argue that it was possible for an individual here or an individual there to find himself paying more, you argued across the income field. In reality (as I have now demonstrated to you three times), what you claim is not true, your protestations that "maybe for some individuals somewhere it is" notwithstanding.

again, when you are ready to deal with the reality:


Average_Tax_Rates.png




you let us know.



as for the estate tax, when you are able to come up with a clear dividing line that you are willing to follow and defend, let us know as well. because it seems the only line we are able to implicitly draw out from what you defend and what you do not defend is "F--- the guy with more money than me".
 
establish justice
preserve domestic tranquility
promote the general welfare

The guys who wrote that thing strongly disagree with you.


what a fascinating claim. perhaps you can link the legislation they wrote and supported which utilized the federal government to redistribute wealth, most especially though a tax on inheritances?
 
No, all I am doing is comparing apples to apples - taking the IRS official rates and applying them equally to three different cases each involving a different source of money that is taxed differently by the IRS. Actual deductions of individuals vary widely and greatly from person to individual. Some people can come up with lots of deductions to minimize their tax levels while others have few. With that reality in mind, it is impossible to consider them in any scenario of comparative taxes. That is reality.

It does NOT matter if Romney pays more than the AVERAGE taxpayer. We are NOT comparing Romney to the average taxpayer. We are comparing people who make the same amount of money in three different categories of taxation for that same money.

As for the estate tax, I have come up with a clear and consistent principle: we tax wages, capital gains and inheritance as income according to the same rate schedules. That is clear as a bell ringing in the early morning. Of course there will be exceptions as I explained to you happens in the writing of legislation. That is simply the way the process works. However, the exceptions - such as gifts of a certain level and the care of a parent for a child - must NOT negate the basic principle in the law. And that principle is that we tax wages, capital gains and inheritance all as income according o the applicable tax schedules.

cp - you are clearly playing a game here trying to trap me in tiny details of language which ignore the overriding principle that I am trying to achieve. I understand that you coming out and defending the rich and defending low taxes for the rich and you endorsing a discriminatory rate for the rich is not a winning argument. So instead, you adopt this nonsense that I an not giving you a detailed proposal as legislation written out for page after page that covers every possible eventuality. So people argue about bowls of oatmeal, books for education, and family vacations trying to reduce this to absurdity.

But that tactic goes nowhere.
 
what a fascinating claim. perhaps you can link the legislation they wrote and supported which utilized the federal government to redistribute wealth, most especially though a tax on inheritances?

Inheritance or estate taxes have been around for a very long time - both in the world and in the USA.

Estate Taxes An Historical Perspective

Right on this very site we were provided with some quotes from founding fathers who supported estate and inheritance taxes.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/10/estate_tax_and_founding_fathers


With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property. Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."

The states left no doubt that in taking this step they were giving expression to a basic and widely shared philosophical belief that equality of citizenship was impossible in a nation where inequality of wealth remained the rule. North Carolina's 1784 statute explained that by keeping large estates together for succeeding generations, the old system had served "only to raise the wealth and importance of particular families and individuals, giving them an unequal and undue influence in a republic" and promoting "contention and injustice." Abolishing aristocratic forms of inheritance would by contrast "tend to promote that equality of property which is of the spirit and principle of a genuine republic."

Others wanted to go much further; Thomas Paine, like Smith and Jefferson, made much of the idea that landed property itself was an affront to the natural right of each generation to the usufruct of the earth, and proposed a "ground rent" — in fact an inheritance tax — on property at the time it is conveyed at death, with the money so collected to be distributed to all citizens at age 21, "as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."

Nothing in the US Constitution prohibits estate or inheritance taxes.
 
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No, all I am doing is comparing apples to apples - taking the IRS official rates and applying them equally to three different cases each involving a different source of money that is taxed differently by the IRS.
very well then. I cede to you victory in fantasy land and shall content myself with merely be correct in reality.
Actual deductions of individuals vary widely and greatly from person to individual.
actually, as both the IRS and CBO have demonstrated, they tend to come in fairly close together so that you can establish effective tax rates for each of the quintiles and indeed, even smaller income ranges.
It does NOT matter if Romney pays more than the AVERAGE taxpayer. We are NOT comparing Romney to the average taxpayer. We are comparing people who make the same amount of money in three different categories of taxation for that same money.
except that we aren't using real categories of taxation, but rather fantasy categories of taxation. hotcha. well yes, once you alter input to assume your result, your result is what you shall likely get.
As for the estate tax, I have come up with a clear and consistent principle: we tax wages, capital gains and inheritance as income according to the same rate schedules.
yes. except that you also add in "gifts" and you refuse to provide a clear definition of either "gifts" or "inheritance" as it applies to the parent-child relationship. you also utterly fail to either grasp or answer the point that forms of wealth are different in nature - that taxing someone who inherits an $8 million brokerage account is different from taxing someone who inherits $5 million worth of land farmed with $2 million worth of equipment and having $1 million worth of barns, silos, a house, etc. In the one case the wealth is easily divisible. A dollar in a brokerage account does not become worth less because it's neighbor is shifted to a government account. In the other division is highly destructive. Farmland is useless without equipment. all of your examples utilize only the most liquid forms of wealth either because you think that only this form is inherited, or because you do not wish to own up to the destruction caused by your taxation of the less liquid forms.
I understand that you coming out and defending the rich and defending low taxes for the rich and you endorsing a discriminatory rate for the rich is not a winning argument.
I couldn't give two lamb shakes for the plight of the rich. They seem to be doing just fine on their own. My point (which you consistently ignore) is that your proposed policy helps the uber rich while harming the poor and middle class to upper middle class.
 
establish justice
preserve domestic tranquility
promote the general welfare

The guys who wrote that thing strongly disagree with you.

Inheritance or estate taxes have been around for a very long time - both in the world and in the USA.

Estate Taxes An Historical Perspective

Right on this very site we were provided with some quotes from founding fathers who supported estate and inheritance taxes.

Estate tax and the founding fathers: You can't take it with you | The Economist

Nothing in the US Constitution prohibits estate or inheritance taxes.

tsk. and you were a history teacher, too. My APUS teacher would have eaten me alive, had I suggested that Jefferson or Paine had authored the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
 
tsk. and you were a history teacher, too. My APUS teacher would have eaten me alive, had I suggested that Jefferson or Paine had authored the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

You must have a reading comprehension problem. I never said they did. I stated that some of our founders supported inheritance and estate taxes. Why are you so dishonest about this?
 
from cpwill

except that we aren't using real categories of taxation, but rather fantasy categories of taxation. hotcha. well yes, once you alter input to assume your result, your result is what you shall likely get.
As for the estate tax, I have come up with a clear and consistent principle: we tax wages, capital gains and inheritance as income according to the same rate schedules.

The rates I quoted are indeed real and not fantasy. You do not like that I gave all three examples with no other deductions. Tough. That is the only fair way to do it since the amount of deductions one takes varies widely from taxpayer to taxpayer. You might have a point if I took them for one category but not for the others. But my not considering deductions was applied evenly to ALL THREE EXAMPLES

yes. except that you also add in "gifts" and you refuse to provide a clear definition of either "gifts" or "inheritance" as it applies to the parent-child relationship. you also utterly fail to either grasp or answer the point that forms of wealth are different in nature - that taxing someone who inherits an $8 million brokerage account is different from taxing someone who inherits $5 million worth of land farmed with $2 million worth of equipment and having $1 million worth of barns, silos, a house, etc. In the one case the wealth is easily divisible. A dollar in a brokerage account does not become worth less because it's neighbor is shifted to a government account. In the other division is highly destructive. Farmland is useless without equipment. all of your examples utilize only the most liquid forms of wealth either because you think that only this form is inherited, or because you do not wish to own up to the destruction caused by your taxation of the less liquid forms.

As has been explained to you time and time again, laws take that into consideration and establish those parameters and definitions. Today there are limits on non taxable gifts. There would be under my proposal also.

Your argument about destruction is highly selective. If my wealth is in money, I have to "destroy" (to use your word) some of it to pay my tax obligations. That is simple reality and the way things are. So if a person inherits farm land or real estate why should they be any different or in some protected class? Again, you want big government to protect some and not others based on your own discriminatory criteria and you want that as a matter of principle and not merely details with exceptions like a gift exemption level.


My point (which you consistently ignore) is that your proposed policy helps the uber rich while harming the poor and middle class to upper middle class.

One other poster alleges the same thing. But we have seen nothing to support this claim.
 
that might be both the most moronic comment I have seen on this board posted in seriousness and one of the most disturbing. You have clearly absolutely no clue what the government is about and what it was founded on.

Let me get this straight first you accuse me of being envyous in post# 739, when I say I envy no person , you say it's moronic?

Then you say the Preamble is just a lot of nonsence?
In previous post you were complaining about government taking away your rights now you say no clue how government works.
So tell me how does government work?
So who wrote the words "WE THE PEOPLE" and what did they have in mind?:peace
 
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Let me get this straight first you accuse me of being envyous, when I say I envy no person , you say it's moronic?

Then you say the Preamble is just a lot of nonsence?
In previous post you were complaining about government taking away your rights now you say no clue how government works.
So tell me how does government work?
So who wrote the words "WE THE PEOPLE" and what did they have in mind?:peace

The words of Paul Simon come to mind from THE BOXER

"a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

Right wingers will dismiss the language of the start of the Constitution but then put themselves though rather labored mental and verbal gymnastics to explain why one individuals letter written in support of the Constitution is suppose to be the last word on the document. Its sad.
 
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