[Dems2008] Re: Why Obama

Carol, there is a lot of demgaguery about the federal estate tax, and  its repeal is sold to folks with less than the full truth of the matter.

• The estate tax is just another revenue source for the govt; and so the question is not whether the revenue should be collected from us, but from whom and via which vehicle should it be collected.   In my view (and these are policy questions on which we can all differ) I would rather take a dollar of tax from a dead guy's estate (before the balance passes as a pure windfall to a child or others) than I would take that dollar from a working person trying to raise and educate his or her children.  So the estate tax (which hits a very small percentage of folks in this country) is a better more preferred source (in my view) than the same dollar coming via the income tax
• second, the step-up in asset basis is  always ignored in these discussions:   if I buy a house for 100K and it's worth $2 million when I die, my devisee takes the date of death fair market value as a stepped up basis.  Seems only fair that since ASSETS (not cash) are the bulk of the estate of a person subject to estate tax, a fair tradeoff for the windfall from the basis step-up is to tax that asset at death.  The earner is DEAD; the legatee or devisee is a windfall beneficiary.

--- In Dems2008@yahoogroups.com, Carol Roberts <carolroberts1@...> wrote:
>
> Wow, I mostly agree with your positions on things, except for the estate
> tax. It taxes after-tax money. I know the threshold has been set very
> high, but I remember the days when I represented widows who had to sell
> their houses in order to pay the estate tax. I don't care that the
> people who now pay estate tax have several houses, its not right.
>
> Carol
>
> citation502 wrote:
> >
> >
> * I support huge tax cuts for those earnings less than 100K, and a
> > repeal of the suspension of the estate tax
>

__._,_.___

Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

__,_._,___