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Long Live the Estate Tax- May it grow to 98%

As I have watched the political environment of this country shift over the last 30 years I have become more and more angry about the outcry against the estate (death) tax. The estate tax is the single greatest invention that our country ever devised to keep from becoming an oligarchy and to make sure that those who enjoyed the most benefits from the privileges of the country paid the largest share to preserve it. Bush's new budget would seek to eliminate it at the expense of dozens of actually useful social programs and move the tax burden onto the middle class. I am curious if there are any people in Colorado Springs Naive enough to think that the estate tax is a bad thing.

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Long Live the Estate Tax- Let it Rise to 98%

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Contributed by: James Myers on 2/22/2007

I have spent the last thirty years watching the development of the country and trying my hardest to keep my head above water financially. As most people know, this is a very difficult thing to do. Several years ago I was told that one of the worst evils was the dreaded "death tax". I didn't know what it was, but as a good little republican I was actually concerned about protecting my "wealth" to shield it from the dreaded feds. When I took a position in the financial industry I started to actually do a little research as to what it means and I was shocked that I ever had a problem with it. I was in an industry that preaches heavily against the estate tax but, in the end all of the arguments against it, I saw were actually strong positives for people like me.

I had a lot of arguments with a lot of people, all of whom tried to convince me that the estate tax was destroying America, but they couldn't tell me how. Then I realized that everybody I spoke with was delusional. I never spoke with a single person who had the slightest thing to fear from the estate tax. For those of you who do not know how it works, it only affects those who are (in my opinion) breathtakingly wealthy. I don't know about you but I don't have $2 million dollars lying around for my heirs at the time of my death and even if I did it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if the government skimmed offa fair amount beyond that limit.

For those of you who don't know how it works. The majority of us do not ever have to worry about estate tax. It is only imposed, for now, on wealth over $2 million dollars and this is not imposed on spouses. So if I were to die, my wife would get whatever I was worth without having to worry about it. Any offspring I produce would then get to split up 100% of $2 million plus a fair amount of anything over that. I don't know how many people got to start life with a couple of million in the bank but if your kids can't put together a living with that kind of nest egg, then they probably aren't worth funding anyway.

The President recently submitted a budget to congress looking to repeal this beautiful system thus providing even more comfort to the most comfortable demographic in our society. The burden for this cut would be placed on what few social programs are left- many of which would be cut including VA benefits and would be shouldered primarily by the middle class. Now our president doesn't have the courage to suggest a tax increase for the rest of us in his term so his solution is to fund this with debt. Let's let our grandkids pay for this, they will sure be grateful then that we gave them the inheritance.

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