Republicans Push $269 Billion Handout For Millionaire Heirs And Heiresses

Republicans Push $269 Billion Handout For Millionaire Heirs And Heiresses

by Zack Carter | huffingtonpost.com | Posted: 04/14/2015 11:59 am EDT
Excerpts:

WASHINGTON -- "House Republicans this week will vote to hand the heirs and heiresses of America's largest fortunes a $269 billion tax break by repealing the federal inheritance tax.
The legislation would shield the very richest families from taxes on the fortunes they inherit. After years of GOP attacks on the inheritance tax, also known as the estate tax, only a few thousand of the wealthiest families are subjected to it - 4,700 total in 2013, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Only individual fortunes worth over $5.43 million can be taxed under current law, an amount that doubles to $10.86 million for wealthy couples. The Republican proposal would eliminate all of these estates - which are over 15,700 percent richer than the median American household - from taxation. Inheritance taxes are at the center of the policy debate over economic inequality. French economist Thomas Piketty has called for a global wealth tax to combat widening economic inequality based on unearned wealth passed between generations."

........

"There has been a very aggressive lobbying campaign by some of the wealthiest families in the country for a couple of decades now," said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank. "But this is more radical than other recent efforts." And the legislation wouldn't just eliminate the estate tax -- it would also allow heirs to escape the already-generous capital gains tax on any stocks and real estate they receive.

The change would significantly alter the meaning of the capital gains tax, since capital gains taxes only hit the wealthy when they actually sell an asset. Moguls could keep their wealth in the stock market and pass it down from generation to generation without ever being taxed. The result is an economic inequality double-whammy in which two of the most pro-rich elements of the tax code are further weakened, costing the federal government $269 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office."

read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/republicans-push-269-bill_n_7061458.html?ir=Politics
......

IMO: When one half of all capital gains go to the richest 0.1 percent who are taxed at just 20 percent, far below the 39.6 percent rate for ordinary income, you gotta know something is wrong, but when the estate tax is even lower applied to just 0.2 percent of estates yearly at a rate of just 17 percent, since millions of dollars of their inheritance are already exempted from the formal 40 percent rate, then you get freakin' angry.

Throughout the decades the uber rich have had excellent deals handed to them so that many rich families are now excluded from the rates by being exempted from the formal 40 percent rate. The familiar loopholes that are forever there for the rich to take advantage of are there for the taking, making the wealthy - and not the poor - the nation's biggest grifters on the national treasury.

When do the rest of us begin to get some of the deals that Congress makes for the wealthy? We never had companies to send overseas for cheap labor, depriving American workers of a chance at the prosperity of the Bill Clinton years. We never got lower tax rates for our averages incomes: in fact they are higher than the wealthist taxpayers. What kind of Democracy is this, that rewards the rich and punishes the rest of us?

America is a tattered and torn nation from wars, depressions, money grabs from the wealthy, jobs going overseas for bigger profits for the rich corporations, and the demonization of the poor and vulnerable by republicans has sealed the republican party's fate in 2016. Their attempts to inject religion into our Democracy, is precisely the reason the settlers came to America to escape religious persecution in Europe, and they wanted a formal government and punctuated that with the 1st Amendment of our Constitution which explicitly states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.."

 

So, taking less money from those who have it is considered a handout?

What do you call it when you take that money from them and hand it over to those who had no part in earning it?



This ought to be entertaining.....

 

I don't care if a person is worth $20 or $200 million.....inheritance should not be taxed.

 

Holy (*)(*)(*)(*)!

Think of the logic behind the O.P. Talk about Authoritarian evil!

It's not the government's money. They government has no right to it.

Our government was never supposed to be in the citizens' lives to this extent or anywhere near it. This is not what it means to be an American... to have this all powerful government.

It's sick. It's demented. You can move to China if that's the government you want. It's not America.

 

Wealth distribution. Taking less of their money is not "giving" them anything. The money that created the estate was already taxed when it was earned and it applies to everybody.

 

From the LW partisan source of the OP, CBPP, we find that estate taxes comprise about .6% of annual federal revenues.

"Estate tax revenues made up 0.6 percent of total federal receipts in 2014."

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3822

But of course, neither HuffPuff, nor OP, nor CBPP (who hides the actual % in a single sentence in the above link) are going to tell us this. Why not? Because their intent is not to honestly discuss US tax policy, but to rabble-rouse with falsehoods and hope you are stupid enough to buy their snakeoil. Are you?

That's about $18 billion a year, nowhere near the "$269 billion handout" in the dishonest thread title. So how do they get $269 billion? They extrapolate ten years into the future and project the $269 billion as part of future federal revenues. But they also conveniently omit the other side of that "$269 billion handout," that it's out of FORTY FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS of federal revenues over those ten years. Still .6%, but out of $44 trillion. Still seem like a huge handout? Doesn't to me. Asking again, did they fool you?

Politifact finds that only 15% of Huffington Post stories/claims are entirely true. That's AWFUL. Why would ANYONE take ANYTHING seriously in Huffington Post? I sure don't.

But arguendo, let's do what OP didn't do, and make some honest points about the trivial ".6% of federal revenue" estate tax (not going to link any of this, but will if anyone is interested):

1. We no longer live in a world where the US enjoys a supremacy in quality of life in comparison to other places. Wealthy elderly (or even young) can simply divest US assets and move to a more hospitable tax regime at the end of their lives. They may live two, ten... or many more years... after doing so, eroding the US income, capital gains and investment base accordingly. It is difficult to quantify the $$ removed from the US tax/investment base in this way, but safe to assume it will increase as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place. Want to gamble with that kind of significant prospective tax base erosion in an ever shrinking, ever more competitive global economy? Want to gamble that .6% more federal revenue will make up for it? I don't. We need to keep our wealthy HERE in the US where we can benefit from their investments, income and cap gains HERE, their heirs spending their inheritances HERE, not chase them away to Singapore over a lousy .6% of federal revenues.

The flip side of this issue is that we want more and more global rich TO MOVE TO THE US, to pay taxes HERE, to invest HERE, to one day die and leave their wealth to heirs HERE. If you were a 60 year old billionaire living in an estate tax-free jurisdiction, would you EVER consider moving to the US? I wouldn't.

2. Despite hokum propaganda about Richie Rich heirs such as in the OP, a majority of estates subject to the inheritance tax consist of relatively illiquid assets (can't be sold this afternoon on the stock market), small businesses and farms, lots of real estate holdings. Forcing fire sales of those assets, or severe encumbrance of them by debt to pay estate taxes, has material, wealth-destroying, growth-destroying, JOB-destroying consequences for small businesses, farms... and the employees of those businesses and farms.

One thing the left will never understand is that you can't just "sell" a business on a street corner. It has to be planned, sometimes over many years. Estate tax planning interferes with GROWTH of these businesses during their entire existence. In essence, a farm that might employ 100 people can only employ 50 due to estate tax concerns. Once again, the actual $$ involved are devilishly hard to accurately estimate, but are material in our economy. So the question to ask yourself is "soak the rich at all costs to get a trivial .6% more revenue and possibly destroy more wealth than revenue gained in the process? or scrap the whole inheritance tax?"

If interested, don't take my word for it, do your own research. Start with the wiki page on US estate taxes, keeping in mind that wiki is partisan left these days, it contains lots of good foundational information, though, and arguments pro and con estate tax. Then branch out from there.

Whatever you do, though, don't accept the kind of dishonest hogwash that OP, Huffington Post, and CBPP are peddling. That's a short path to a brain full of mush.

 

lol...handouts. lol.

 

Another awesome Rep worthy post from Sanskrit, who single-handedly hands liberals their arses once again.

 

Yes.

Inheritance!

 

So, if I spent my life working for the family business, I have no right to inherit that business when my parents pass away? And allowing people to keep more of their earmings is a hand out? Wow.

 

Thanks. Want to add a little thought experiment and extrapolation of my own here, since the LW sewer pipe insists on such to reach people, to emphasize something in the prior long post. Imagine if Bill Gates' dad had not been an upper middle class worker, but instead a very successful investor worth millions. Imagine if he had moved the family away to a more hospitable tax regime to avoid US estate taxes. Instead of selling vaporware to IBM from the US, Bill did so, and founded MSFT, from somewhere else. What result for the US? What if all the related Silicon Valley companies that sprung from that sprung up in some Silicon Valley somewhere other than the US?

How big of an OUCHIE can you conceive that would represent for the US economy to date? .6% more revenue and empty "social justice" class warfare worth results like that? It's -not- that farfetched.

10,000 MSFT employees became millionaires due to working for MSFT. Once again, OUCHIE!

If the rich do in fact get richer, we need to keep them and their riches HERE so we can reap the benefits, not chase them elsewhere and suffer unknown consequences.

 

This is one of those give aways to the very wealthy that the GOP tries to sell as something for everyone.

99% of the conservatives who yell about "death taxes" will never have to pay it.

Yet, they bray like sheep over it.

Who is affected?

People like the Walton Family, the Crows, Steve Forbes, Charles and David Koch's, the Bush's. All those people living on inherited money and connections (the guys who lecture you about hard work and entrepreneurship).

Few small businesses and farm are subject to federal inheritance taxes.

Moreover, all these wannabe constitutional scholars on the right conveniently ignore the fact taht the founding fathers favored inheritance taxes in the new republic almost to a man.

They did not want to see the US become ruled by an oligopoly of inherited money, the way Europe was.

 

Didn't say you didn't have a right to inherit. I did say you had no right to inherit it tax free. And since most small businesses are worth far less than the threshold for the inheritance taxes, it's a moot point.

 

more tax cuts for the rich... what are republicans doing for the middle class again... oh right.... nothing

 

anything under 5 million is tax free, if it's worth more then that, you pay taxes on that amount above 5 million only

same as you payed tax on your income when they paid you to work there (unless they were paying you under the table that is)

.

 

So then you agree, inheriting a family business is not equivalent to a government hand-out.

- - - Updated - - -

I never could figure why it is right, or how it could be considered legal to tax the same money more than once.

 

So many keystrokes, so little meaningful response to the MANY points in my long post that you decided to blockquote and then ignore most of entirely. LOTS of small businesses and farms are subject to inheritance tax, but more importantly, MILLIONS of small businesses/farms must take inheritance tax into consideration throughout their entire existence, and plan NOT to be subject to it via expensive, onerous structuring... compliments of people like me. That planning process involves 1. Spending maybe more to hire people like me than the estate tax brings in as a whole, 2. A pronounced chill on small business growth over its duration. Money spent on insurance policies to pay inheritance tax is money not spent growing the business or HIRING employees. Money spent on me is not spent growing the business and HIRING employees. Money spent on accountants, corporate trustees, etc. is not spent on growing the business and HIRING employees. Many business owners just stay small to avoid estate taxes, what do you reckon THAT kind of decision costs the economy in jobs, innovations, competition?

In addition, structures that are best for tax planning are not best for competitive growth. There is an interim "dead zone" where growing through the capital markets is not yet available, yet the net worth of the business/farm is squarely in the estate tax domain. Scary, expensive territory. In this way, the realities of estate tax planning stifle growth that could COMPETE with BigCo, and competing with BigCo leads to HIGHER PAY for line workers.

To restate, there are numerous ramifications of the estate tax that are very real but can't be quantified. Keep up the rabble rousing over .6% of federal revenues? Cling to a partisan bone that could be, and in my very well-educated and experienced opinion on this likely is costing FAR more than it brings in? Choice is yours.

 

So, you consider money being transferred from a person's estate after their death to a living relative a "handout"?



It's their money. It's not your money and it's not the (*)(*)(*)(*)ing governments money.
<<< MODERATOR EDIT: OFF TOPIC >>>

 

How can you support taxing the same pot of money more than once? If I accumulate it and pay taxes on it, why is it right to be taxed again because I gave it to my Son?

Sounds like a means to justify your envy over the assets my family accumulated over the years.

 

Why is five million the arbitrary number? Why not six or seven? Why not two or three? What's so significant about five million?

Why not just take it all and let the next generation fend for themself?

 

There. Fixed it for ya.

 

So then, you think it's perfectly fine to take more taxes from money already taxed because I pass it off to my Son?

 

No.

I just changed your verbiage from "have" to "earned".

"Have" sounds too much like it fell out of a tree on their lap where in reality they "earned" it through hard work and smart investments.

I'm on your side on this issue.

 

Well, taxing inheritance is one of those things I dislike but I don't want to eliminate it. The government can't pay its bills now, and we want to cut off more income?!

Starve the beast method of cost control only works in the fiction of someone's mind.

 

When I can't pay my bills, I look for places to cut expenses. Maybe I don't go out for dinner so often. Maybe I don't buy that new car I wanted, Maybe I don't go to Mexico on a vacation one year. Why can't government be required to do the same? It's certainly not becaaue there's no such thing as wasteful spending.