Don't misunderstand me. I think the whole idea of a death tax is anathema to liberty and the noble human desire to leave an inheritance for ones heirs. We should be encouraging family businesses, not burdening them. What I object to is liberal hypocrites who pretend to support this tax while using every loophole possible to avoid paying it themselves. Unfortunately, those loopholes really require a huge fortune to make using them feasible.
I think if you really research wealth...since you don't have any personal experience in this area...you will find that the acquisition of wealth, and holding on to it, are a product of tax accountants, personal contacts in the upper circles, and anything but keeping your nose to the grindstone and playing by the rules... This fallacy that only the wealthy worked hard to make their fortune is just that...a fallacy. Who makes the laws? The poor and middle class? Who can afford all the tax dodges? The poor and middle class? Who is given every advantage to make more money with their existing money? The poor and middle class? You play, you pay...especially when the success so often comes not from playing by the rules that the average person has to follow...
Translation: "Help me stu, help me...help me Mr. Wizard, help me!!!" First time you make a coherent winning argument...well, that would be the first time...
My experience is that people got rich through taking risks using borrowed money mainly. Others saw opportunities and made the most of them, typically by starting businesses. You are right that the tax structure in this country makes it very difficult to accumulate wealth through working for a living. How can you when various levels of government skim off half, then tax you again on the value of your real estate, then tax you every time you buy something, then tax inflation-caused gains as "capital gains", then want to tax you again when you die. I fully expect them to tax the air we breathe. Oh wait, obama already wants to do that through cap and trade.
I stop by ET just to laugh at insane bullshit like yours. You're too stupid to understand the inequity of this tax aren't you? The truly, longtime, dynasty rich are de facto exempt because cash and stocks can be easily held in custodian and trust accounts. The working rich-those whose wealth isn't in cash but in their business, are the ones who wind up exclusively paying estate taxes. Case in point is the Democrat nominee for Obama's old Senate seat in Illinois: 3 years ago his father died suddenly. The family had to pay the IRS 75million in estate taxes. Today the bank is broke-by the tune of 50-60 million. If not for paying the estate tax, Broadway Bank would still be viable.
The family should be pissed at their old man for not planning the estate in the event of his sudden demise. Life insurance and estate planning is there for a reason...
Can you ever go at least a paragraph without making a stupid statement? "then want to tax you again when you die." Hey dimwit, no one who is dead pays a cent of tax... I would explain the physical impossibility...but that is probably beyond your Rush Limbaugh loving empty head...
It's nice to see KTS has something right. It's your money and gifting it away while alive or dead should be a non taxable event for all parties involved. Just because money or assets change ownership does not mean that big brother should be allowed to put it's grimy hands on it.
You really mean tax law has arbitrarily created an industry. Authoritarian big gubbermint does it all the time.:eek: