Who wins if Trump repeals the estate tax Jessica Dickler | @jdickler 8 Hours AgoCNBC.com 1K COMMENTSDonald Trump rallied the working class during his campaign, but he also championed one benefit favoring mostly the super-rich: eliminating the federal estate tax. It's one part of the president-elect's overall tax plan that he has been particularly specific about. In conjunction with a repeal of the estate tax, he has proposed taxing capital gains on assets upon the owner's death, with exemptions for small businesses and family farms on the first $10 million. "It ends the death tax," Trump said in September. "It's a double taxation, a lot of families go through hell over the death tax." "I look forward to working with President-elect Trump on legislation to permanently bury the death tax once and for all," House Ways and Means Committee ChairmanKevin Brady said in an email to CNBC.Ways and Means is the chief tax-writing committee in the House and is where tax legislation generally originates. "For too long, this tax has threatened family owned businesses — including women and minority-owned businesses — from being passed down to their children and grandchildren. It's time to move forward with pro-growth tax reform that fully repeals the death tax and replaces it with a tax code built for growth," Brady said. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch agreed. "The death tax on family farms, small businesses, ranches and estates has crippled hard-working families for far too long. It ought to be repealed, plain and simple," he said in an email to CNBC. Under current rules, a taxpayer can pass up to $5.45 million to heirs tax-free. For married couples it's $10.9 million. Above that amount, beneficiaries must pay an estate tax of 40 percent. (Currently, there are also 15 states and the District of Columbia that assess an estate tax, according to the Tax Foundation.) Only the wealthiest Americans now pay the federal levy.In 2015, the Tax Policy Center estimated there were about 10,800 estate returns filed and about half of those were taxable. Still, the amount of tax collected on just those returns was over $18 billion, the Tax Policy Center said. "It doesn't apply to 99 percent of us," said Steve Martin, senior managing advisor at BKD Wealth Advisors, "butfor those it does apply to, it's a pretty significant tax."... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/21/who-wins-if-trump-repeals-the-estate-tax.html
The city of Detroit entered bankruptcy in 2013 and today announced that they're going to bring the Pistons back to the city at a cost of 34 million dollars to it's Downtown Development Authority. In addition, there are to be 55 million dollars of taxpayer issued bonds that they claim the Pistons will be responsible for paying off, but it's all kind of murky and I don't know whether the city will have any secondary obligation on this. Stadium deals are poor investments and financially troubled cities like Detroit shouldn't be wasting money on them. If the city needs money later, I would hope that President Trump would tell them to forget it.