Do you support an inheritance tax?

Apparently you've never received an inheritance because it's far from being an "instantaneous" process.

Financial obligations must be paid from assets, adminstratve and legal fees are involved as well as other expenses are incurred and it can often take months or even years in the case of some estates, and in all of this the deceased is not involved and isn't "giving" anything to anyone because they're DEAD! The "estate" represented by the admistrator and not the deceased is the entity tranferring the wealth to the heirs and even the courts can become involved in the transfer and distribution of the assets.

 

You make a good point, and I agree that you're right regarding current law. According to this IRS publication, "The estate tax is a tax on your right to transfer property at your death."

I oppose such a tax since I think the transfer of ownership of property ought to be a fundamental right.

 

Punishment is penalizing someone for an offense. Requiring someone to pay for what they chose to take isn't punishment. No one is judging people, there is no offense being cited or penalty being applied.




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I don't think all do. The most frequent objection isn't to collecting sufficient taxes, it's that America asks 5% of us to pay for what 100% of us receive. Every year.

A further objection is choosing to spend so much, that no other solution seems to be possible.




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Let's say a person upon death has $140 million.

This person can give the entire $140 million to a 501c3 and no estate taxes are paid.

This person can give $14,000 gift checks to 10,000 people, including close friends and family, and no estate taxes are paid.

Or this person can desire to leave it to their kids and pay whatever estate taxes...million$.

Those who believe estate taxes are based on the transfer of funds will have a hard time explaining the above tax-free transfers.

IMO estate taxes serve two purposes; First, it's low hanging tax fruit for the government. Second, it's a political tool to extract money from wealth to satisfy those who are jealous of the wealth.

There's something askew about paying taxes after one's death??

 

There might be a Republican that actually wants to collect enough in taxes to fund authorized expenditures but I've never heard of them. There have been no Republican propasals that would balance the following year's budget that I'm aware of. There are lots of mythical proposals but nothing to fund the actual budgets being passed.

There is a general misunderstanding on who funds the federal government. I have a chart from 2009 that I would post but I'm having a problem with attachments so I'll just provide a statement from it. Remember that in 2009 our tax rates were a bit lower but I don't believe it changes the facts.

There is also the misconception that all Americans benefit equally from government spending and I can personally attest to the fact that is false. While we can all say we benefit from certain government services like national defense I worked in the defense industry and also earned over $100,000/yr all paid for with tax dollars. Not only did I receive the "general benefit" I also received a "cash benefit" on top of that and I was a small fish in a big pond. Some received millions of dollars in personal income derived from federal programs.

Authorized expenditure are created by both Republicans and Democrats working together. They are not Republican and they're not Democrat, they're Congressional. Regardless of what a person may or may not want spending on (or not on) that's not how America works.

Of note, in case you've missed it, I've actually made a tax proposal that woulld always balance the US budget regardless of wha the authorize budget of Congress might be.

http://www.politicalforum.com/budget-taxes/399015-creating-fair-taxation.html

 

To who?



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If we had free markets I would agree with you. We don't. The rich today all hold some form of government -issued privilege, and if for no other reason than that, they should be taxed to the extreme. While our government is engaged in the issuance and enforcement of privilege I will support taxing the rich into oblivion. The way I see it, first privilege should be abolished, then we can talk about ending taxation … doing it in the reverse order will lead to total economic destruction.

 

A slightly expanded copy of my federal tax proposal has been sent to the Democratic Party, Republican Party, Libertarian Party, the President, and to my members in Congress.

 

The "Natural (inalienable) Right of Property" is a fundamental right but as with all such rights the freedom to exercise that right can be subject to limitations based upon compelling arguments.

By analogy we have the "Inalienable Right of Thought" that we exercise through speech and expression but based upon a compelling argument that freedom to exercise the right is limited because it's against the law to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.

In John Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapter 5, he addresses the right of property and in his arguments he establishes that there is a limitation on what a person can have a right of property to as it is not unlimited.

http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm

In Locke's fundamental argument for the Right of Property a person can literally "own too much" because there is no humanly way they can possibly use all of the wealth they've accumulated and to that surplus wealth they have no right of property. There is a point were the wealth literally exceeds what is necessary to live the most lavish of lifestyles and to that wealth the person has no right of property.

The problem for many is that they embrace the positives of the Right of Property but refuse to accept the inherent limitations upon that Right of Property falsely believing that the limitations do not exist. Those limitations do exist but in point of fact they cause no harm to the person. This limitation on "excess wealth" is fundamentally no different than the limitation upon freedom of speech that prohibits us from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.

 

I'm looking forward to hearing their response to your proposal.




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Sent months ago the only response I've received has been "form letters" that never address the actual content in the correspondence. You know, like the, "I believe that our tax codes need to be reformed and I'm working on that with 'yadda-yadda'" that we generally receive whenever we contact politicians.

 

Who would have guessed that? Unilaterally judging the value of those compromises and providing a single solution you decided was best for all 316,000,000 of us... you would have thought they would have eaten it up. *shrug* Life is full of surprises.

You made an effort though. And maybe someone will do the extra work of picking through your manifest and maybe doing so they'll hit on one or two of your points that help them solve a problem they're wrestling with. It's not the most effective way to make a contribution, but it could help. I hope it does.



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Heard a guy in another forum say something similar. He was talking about black people. I don't agree with the two of you.




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One thing that annoys me are those that complain about a problem but offer no pragmatic solutions to the problem. My tax proposal is not based exclusively on my Libertarian political ideology because that's not pragmatic. Instead I addressed taxation from a compromise position based upon Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian political ideologies. Is it perfect? I would say no from an ideological perspective but it is pragmatical because it considered all of the primary agenda issues identified by the different political ideologies.

I applied that same "compromise" when addressing an inheritance tax. First of all I exanded it to address all windfall incomes that are very large in nature so it's not an "inheritance" tax anymore. It's a "windfall income tax" that addresses large amounts of income in a single year regardless of source. I spent considerable time in thinking about it.

Looking as it as an income that would typically only occur in once a lifetime I considered simply applying the annual exemption of $50,000 over the typical 45 year working career of the person. That would have resulted in a $2.25 million exemption from taxation with the single income tax rate imposed on amounts in excess of that. It's really not a bad proposition but it would only ensure up to a lifetime $112,500/yr income at 5% guarenteed return on investment. While that's a good income it wasn't all that good so I bumped it up to an exemption of $8 million that would ensure a lifetime income of $400,000 placing the heir in the top 1% as a compromise to "Republicans" that didn't want any taxation at all. At the same time the total inheritance can be many, many times that amount because there's no cap on the inheritance although the amount above the exemption is taxed at the income tax rate for the year of inheritance.

It was a compromise and not perfect from any ideological standpoint all of which conflict with each other but it is a pragmatic proposal that should, or at least could, be acceptable to all political ideologies. From an ideoogical standpoint I think people need to understand that the more they get away from a centralist position the more willing that they have to be willing to accept the exact opposite of what they propose. A person that demands a 0% tax must also be willing to accept a 100% tax that might be demanded by their opposition. The willingness to compromise reduces the width of the possible solutions to the problem.

 

You'll have to explain how owning something is analogous to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.

 

Not sure what you mean by government issued privilege, but I still think that transfer of ownership ought to be a fundamental right.

 

Income tax, yes. An extra tax on top of income to punish people for being wealthy? Doesn't seem fair

 

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/10/johnston--1.html

 

“From its Latin origin, a privilege is a "private law," a law with someone's name on it, a law that permits someone to do what others may not do. We should agree to eschew privilege.” – Nic Tideman


“Seems to me that a “right” is something everyone should have, like life, liberty, free speech, rewards of working and saving. A privilege is something A can only have by depriving B et al. Those with privileges have sought to expand the meaning of “right” to include their privileges.” — Mason Gaffney


Land titles, patents & copyright, corporate charters, banking charters, occupational licenses, sugar quotas, taxi-medallions, etc. are all government created privileges.

These are all private laws which allow the holder of a piece of paper to do what others have been forbidden from doing. In short, privilege is the removal of the natural rights of the excluded.The natural rights of the privilege holder are retained, while the natural rights of everyone else is removed by law … that is the essence of privilege.

 

I agree with all but the first. All but the first are a violation of property rights, including the property on has in one's own body.

 

Ownership of one's body is an entirely worthless concept when one can't set foot on the earth where there is opportunity without being robbed by some entitled parasitic land privilege owner, demanding fruits of your labor without reciprocation.

Ownership of land & natural resources and ownership of one's own body, as espoused in your philosophy, are actually mutually exclusive and 100% at odds with each other.

It's NOT difficult to understand why. You just have to THINK.

 

No they can't

IRS Raises Limit On Tax-Free Lifetime Gifts

As many estate planners anticipated, the Internal Revenue Service has raised the limit on tax-free transfers during life or at death. Starting in 2014 that amount, known as the basic exclusion, will go up to $5.34 million per person, from $5.25 million this year.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2013/10/31/irs-raises-limit-on-tax-free-lifetime-gifts/

 

You aren't punishing anyone. They are dead.

You are just taking part of something that's is being gifted to people who didn't earn it and giving that part to other people who didn't earn it.

 

If we don't have a legal framework in which parcels of land are recognized as being owned by particular owners, then there would be no way to legally resolve disputes between two people who want to use the same piece of land at the same time.