| To the Editor: Congress is urged to maintain existing estate tax provisions |
| Written by John C. "Jack" Fisher |
| Wednesday, 28 November 2012 10:35 |
|
The American dream isn't about working hard, investing wisely and spending sensibly in order to leave something for Uncle Sam. But farmers and other family business owners will be required to do just that unless Congress acts to maintain existing provisions of the federal estate tax. When it's time to meet our maker, what's left behind should be for our kids, not the IRS. A Tax Foundation survey of more than 2,000 Americans rated estate taxes the most unfair of all taxes. Sixty-four percent of Ohioans supported last year's elimination of the state's death tax. Nobody likes Washington double-dipping. Farmers and family business owners have already paid income, sales, capital gains, real estate and sometimes even previous estate taxes on everything they've built over a lifetime. A tax that exists just to tax again is just plain wrong. This is also a jobs issue. Farm and family business earnings are poured back into land, buildings and equipment, which boosts the local economy, but often leaves insufficient cash to pay the death tax when the owner passes away. Heirs are forced to sell all or part of their heritage to cover the government's covetous tab, which results in fewer local businesses to hire local people. Overly burdensome taxes kill jobs. When a lifetime of paying taxes comes to an end, fairness demands legacies be handed down to families, not handed over to the tax man. Please join Ohio Farm Bureau in asking Congress to maintain existing provisions of the federal estate tax. John C. "Jack" Fisher Executive vice president Ohio Farm Bureau Federation |
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Comments
Your blind bubble-think really exists divorced from time, space, and reality, doesn't it?
Notice that the word "Obama" or even "this administration" never appeared before you mentioned it.
The number of people affected by the estate tax is truly minuscule, affecting only a tiny portion of those whom lunatics of the right will convince that this is a dangerous issue.
Or the heirs over-extend financially to pay the tax, putting the family farm or small-business at risk. If farm or small-business fails the family loses its wealth, and the prosperity of the community is diminished.
Or maybe it’s really about politicians and bureaucrats having more money to do with as they think best, and they don’t care who gets hurts in the process.
True, because the few were tyrants with the peoples freedoms instead of a protector of it. They by their actions caused a third party (government) to get involved and regulate. Just the addition of a third party without that third party being highly inefficient means everything involved will cost more while infringing more on personal freedom. The answer to the estate tax is to remove governments ability to regulate and that can only happen when the people love their neighbor. Not likely right?
If you inherited your fortune, you didn't actually "earn" anything. Low estate taxes just encourage the expansion of a parasite class that lives off inheritances.
I'm sure everyone will recognize at least a few people they know that have never farmed a day in their lives or else haven't farmed in many, many years. They just happen to own some farm land.
That's fine if they chose not to farm the land but why should we taxpayers subsidize them for not something they have no intention of doing anyway?
If someone is able to accumulate wealth throughout their life despite the existing tax burden, to allow the government to tax that accumulated wealth a second time is just wrong.
Is it really the role of government to decide winners and losers by attempting to control the accumulation of wealth by a few, especially when they fail miserably at that goal as discussed by others above? Shouldn't government's role be setting a level playing field where all can strive and succeed or fail on their own merits? So much of the bureaucracy we pay so grossly for seems now focused on the former, not the latter.
Said another way: "If I'm not lucky enough to have parents who saved for the future and have something to pass on to me, then nobody should have that."
Really? Is that what our country has devolved to? Envy of what others have driving a greed to seize it from them?
Those folks who leave an inheritance typically were not also recipients of great wealth themselves. They earned it through a lifetime of hard work and some level of frugality. Their incomes were taxed like the rest of us as they built their wealth. To then tax it again when they no longer have a voice in the matter (after death), is immoral and wrong.
I have listened to right-wing crap my entire life regarding how government "handouts" discourage hard work. I'll repeat: if you inherited something, you absolutely did not earn it. Perhaps, your parents earned it. Perhaps, they inherited it as well. That really makes no difference. What is your incentive to work if you are living off the fruits of your parents or grandparents labor?
Your "double-taxation" argument is nonsensical for reasons that cannot be explained in 800 characters.
After all that, they are able to put away some money, as my parents would say, " to take care of us in our old age". If, at the end of that old age there is any left over, to tax it again is simply double taxation. How is that "nonsensical? All they earned up to that point was taxed at the prevailing rates, so to take more from what is left over, and when their vote is no longer possible, is what I am talking about. And yes, THAT taxation is immoral, and it is wrong.
No one deserves to have rich parents. If you are so fortunate, great. But be prepared to pay at least as much tax on unearned inheritance income as I do on the money that I worked for us. Anything less is scandalous.
Check out "The Fair Tax", a concept discussed in a book by Rep. Linder (R-GA) and Neal Boortz. Their concept, as discussed in the book, would replace all our federal taxes with a tax on the retail purchase of goods.
The sale of those items once used, would be tax free, as would all the intermediate steps going from raw materials to the finished goods. There would be no taxes embedded in the products, only the tax on the final, new, retail purchase. It is a convincing, and easy, read.
No, thank you.
Those ideas are bankrupt.
This explains a lot about you.
This would make retail goods the province of the elites as those taxes would be a higher burden on the poor than on the rich.
The Fair Tax, by the way, addresses your concern about the burden differential by issuing everyone a "pre-bate" that is equal to the amount of taxes that a person/family at the poverty line would be expected to pay for the items they require to live.
For me, the positive elements of The Fair Tax include a one-tax solution (vs the coctail we currently have), everyone (including tourists and illegal aliens) pays, it is consumption based, is simple and easily complied with, self-determined based on one's own purchase decisions, and does not embed layer upon layer of taxes on a good or service.
But, Brian, you wouldn't know any of that, because of your blinders.
And, as I said in my response to dear Brian, by providing a "pre-bate" to all taxpayers equal to the amount of tax a person/family at the poverty line would pay, this compensates for the arguement of extreme regression in the lowest level of income. Beyond sustance, in the abstract, all other expenditures are optional, and therefore the consumption beyond that level of existance is optional, as is paying the associated tax.
Beyond existing at the poverty level, if you don't want to pay a tax, don't consume. Pretty simple.
(Note: stating all this from memory, it has been several years since reading the book.)
Just because you say so, Brian, does not make it so. But I guess you think if you mock people enough, they will shut up and go away.
The Fair Tax may be flawed, but until you debate something on its merits, rather than just mock and belittle, we will never know. I suspect that is exactly what you seek to do.
I don't want you to go away either, you are demonstrating why capitalism does not work for us.
Your Boortz 'pre-bate' system would still restrict access to common goods to those ABOVE the poverty level (which is outdated). No final, new, retail products for poor folks, right? We should just crawl back to our cardboard boxes and eat government cheese at "mere sustenance" levels? In the wealthiest nation on Earth, which was built by slaves and the poor (NOT the wealthy)?
Why would I be interested in considering THAT?
There are many other alternatives that YOU are not considering, with YOUR blinders.
This got me long ago, when I purchased a car "tax free" overseas through NATO car sales. When I brought it to Virginia, they wanted to charge me sales tax on the purchase value of the vehicle, even though it was now "used" and previously registered elsewhere.
Just another example of politicians seeking any and all sources of revenue to fund ever-increasing spending.
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