The Fight Over the Estate Tax
Everyone knows that death and taxes are the “two certainties in life,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) in USA Today. But few small-business owners and farmers realize that once they die, the government will “swoop in” and confiscate 40 percent of the money they and their families “spent alifetime building—and already paid taxes on.” The “death tax” is “an attack on the American dream,” which is why the House of Representatives voted last week to repeal it. Those most affected are ranchers, farmers, and entrepreneurs, and their grieving families are often forced to sell their land and businesses to satisfy the IRS.
“Why is America punishing success?” It would be one thing if this “odious tax” were a revenue generator, said Stephen Moore in National Review.com. But “it hardly raises any money.” In 2013, the estate tax raised just $12.7 billion, a tiny fraction of federal tax receipts. It’s “all economic pain, with no gain,” and it’s long past time to kill it for good. Why are Republicans so fixated on repealing a tax that affects just 5,400 very rich Americans each year? asked USA Today in an editorial. You have to leave at least $5.4 mil lion (or $10.8 million for a couple) to heirs to pay any federal estate tax at all; just 0.2 percent of Americans who die each year leave estates that are liable to it. All of the Republicans’ justifications for getting rid of this tax are “bogus,”said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. Their claim that the estate tax hurts mostly farmers and entrepreneurs? In 2013, just 120 farmers and small-business owners had to pay it. The outrage over double taxation? More than half the value of estates over $100 million come from capital gains “that have never been taxed.” The tax doesn’t raise any revenue? The Treasury would actually lose $269 billion over the next 10 years if it were repealed. But who needs facts when you are pandering to a base of ultrarich “trust-fund babies”?
This bill will never become law, said Robert Schroeder in MarketWatch.com. There aren’t enough votes to advance the measure in theSenate, and President Obama has vowed to veto it. Which makes the GOP’s push for repeal all the more politically tone-deaf, said Aaron Task in Yahoo.com. American workers’ wages are stagnant, economic inequality is at its highest level since the 1920s, and workers “increasingly feel the American dream is out of their reach.” The 2016 race is just heating up, and House Republicans’ biggest priority is a tax giveaway to a few thousand multimillionaires? They just “handed the Democrats a gift.”
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