Monday, June 05, 2006

[POLITICS] The Senate is going to be voting soon to repeal the estate tax. This is a tax on bequests over $2 million -- only one in 200 estates pay any tax at all.

The Republicans will talk about family farms, though no one has ever really lost a family farm because they had to pay tax on the over-$2 million part of a family farm. As Paul Krugman points out, this is a tax on Paris Hilton.

From a tactical point of view, let's start calling this the "Paris Hilton Relief Act." I think that might help explain it to people who have a gut objection to an estate tax, but don't realize that they are never, ever going to benefit from the elimination of the tiny estate tax the US still has.

2:46 AM

2 Comments:

Yeah, my heart really goes out to those people who are only going to inherit $7 million worth of company shares instead of the full $10 million. (Remember it's $2 mil per person, so mom gets the $2 mil limit too.)

I don't think it's socialist to expect people who inherit big, big, big chunks of money to contribute a little extra to society. It's not like they earned it. And the people who did earn it are, by definition, already dead.

In real life, of course, the estate tax only applies to that part of the estate that the parents haven't been able to hide in trusts. So the real rate is far less than 50%.

By  Alex Epstein, at 5:46 PM  

Why does anyone lose their jobs when a company is sold?

I like the idea of taxing capital gains... let's see if the Republicans go for it.

As far as bitch-slapping Paris, that really *needs* to happen.

By  Alex Epstein, at 11:12 AM  

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