Death To The Death Tax

Leaving aside the universally-loathed (by taxpayers) the tax on wages (misnamed the “income” tax), the most unpopular piece of governmental theft is that of the inheritance tax.  And with good reason.

In the not-too-distant past, inheritance taxes were the only stream of tax revenue which actually cost more to collect than the revenue thus obtained.  (In 2005, as I recall, the cost of collection per dollar was $1.07, and prior to that it went as high as $1.13, before the IRS — with the willing aid of Congress — “improved” their tax collection ratio simply by disallowing many of the cutouts and exceptions.)

But what’s interesting about these taxes is that they were hated even by Americans who would never pay a dime after their parents passed away — the implicit unfairness of the tax’s rationale that the inheritor never “earned” that inheritance, and therefore it was “unfair” and should be redistributed confiscated by the State, was understood by everyone to be total bullshit (born of pure Socialist wealth envy).

Now try this little piece of bastardy, courtesy of President Braindead’s handlers:

Democrats in Congress have made no secret of their desire to slip all sorts of tax hikes into the various massive legislative packages that have thus far (thankfully) remained bogged down in the Senate. They would like to see a significant increase in the gas tax to pay for the liberal wish list known as “infrastructure.” There’s also a continued push for a so-called “wealth tax” on people who are considered by the Dems’ socialist wing to have “too much money.” But one of the most controversial of these plans is the call to greatly expand the inheritance tax, more correctly known as the death tax. However, describing it as either an expansion or an increase isn’t accurate. The New York Post took a look at the plan this week and revealed that what they really want to do is create an entirely new category of taxation for the estates of the deceased, treating the transfer of assets to survivors as a capital gains event.

And it gets better:

For those of you who are thinking that this is “somebody else’s problem” because it only applies to the rich and famous, think again. If you’ve ever read Thomas Stanley’s 2010 bestseller, “The Millionaire Next Door,” you probably understand how this works. If you work throughout most of your life, put money away into any sort of retirement plans, and own your own home, you can break the millionaire barrier without too much trouble by the time you are in your sixties. No, not everyone in the middle class manages it, but this applies to a lot more people than you might think.
If you are fortunate enough to live for a very long time after you retire, you may burn through a fair bit of that wealth. But if you unfortunately only make it to somewhere around the national American average life expectancy, in your mid-70s or even late-60s, you could still be sitting on a tidy sum to help your family along. But nearly 80% of that wealth would evaporate under Biden’s new scheme.

And to reiterate:

Good luck figuring out the arguments in favor of a system of governmental robbery like this. Aside from envy and a desire to eat the rich or “redistribute” everything, there aren’t many. But one of the most compelling arguments  against this capital gains concept is that we would be treating wealth held in individual estates the same as income. And all of that money and value  has already been taxed. Every estate tax represents a case of double taxation on the same income via renaming the fingers coming to pick your pockets. Don’t let them get away with it. Estate taxes should be repealed, not effectively doubled.

This would be my suggestion to stop them getting away with this new kind of theft, but no doubt someone will have a problem with it.

27 comments

  1. All taxation is theft. You see now there is a city in California that wants to tax gun owners. Unreal.

    These taxes are so the democrats and RINO’s can continue to pay the lazy bastards who don’t work money for doing Jack shit even after this SCAM demic passes.

    Inheritance tax is especially wrong. Your parents, aunts, uncles and other family members worked and paid taxes on the money they earned their whole lives. They paid property taxes on houses and land they owned. Why in the flying fook do these assholes in government think it’s ok to Double, triple and more dip? Parasites.

    Old jokes that are fitting here:

    “It’s so cold outside today that I saw a Democrat with his hands in his own pockets”

    And

    “Government stimulus? Keep your hands out of my pockets! I can stimulate myself!”

  2. There was a time I would have agreed but it has passed. The way things are we need to concentrate, not on good government but on helping our friends and hurting our enemies and most of the superrich fall in the enemy category. The world would be a better place if someone had figured out how to confiscate Sam Walton’s money when he died instead of having his leftist heirs get it. Ditto Rockefeller, Hunt, Ford etc. There is a huge 2nd-3rd generation problem with great wealth. I suppose we can hope that Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg’s offspring won’t be commies like their fathers but I’m not counting on that.

    Serious technical problems exist. How to prevent the superrich from using their wealth to launder money through foundations or foreign countries is one. Another is how to avoid wiping out successful family owned businesses and farms. Probably solve the second by raising the exemption to a billion and indexing it. I have no idea how to fix the first problem.

    1. So Richard, you want to take money from those you disagree with? Even when you did NOT earn said money? You sound like a socialist. Are you sure you are on the correct website?

      And what “friends” do we need to help? The losers who refused to work during the SCAM demic who got $ 300 extra a week for doing jack shit? On the backs of those work worked?

      Are we going to give people with kids 300 extra a month forever? By stealing money from people who do NOT have kids? Why should I pay for someone else’s kids? They chose to have kids.

      And people have been struggling forever. I don’t have it easy and I am not wealthy. Yet by some, I make enough money to tax, so that the goverment can steal it.

      If you don’t like walmart or his kids, then don’t shop their. As much as I think large retailers are assholes, and and their owners are dick heads, I do NOT advocate stealing their money. Stop giving these places your business. My point was the government limited choice during the scamdemic.

      1. I absolutely believe in smiting my enemies. Your libertarian fantasies is why we lose.

    2. 2nd generation wealth often grows the business because they were around to see their parents build it. It’s usually the 3rd and 4th that are likely to run it into the ground and / or the march of progress overtakes the Walmarts if they can’t keep up with the Amazons.

      Gates and Buffet have already announced they are only leaving their kids with “Small amounts” ( 10’s, not 100’s of millions ), and they are tying to get others to likewise. Most will go to “charitable foundations ” where other people will steal it.

  3. Keep as much of your “stuff” as secret as possible, no matter what, even illegally if necessary. There is no downside to thwarting thieves. Then, disperse your “stuff” as you see fit before you die.

    Stuff: any and all things you possess including FRNs and any other type of wealth. Fuck everything gov’t.

    Or, do like me. Spend everything and die broke.

    1. Ghost, I agree with most everything you said here. Except one thing, spending it all, I am a saver. But that could bite me in the ass later. If I save enough, I will be considered “rich” and the DemoCRAPs, RINO’s and people like Richard above will want to steal the nuts Ive stored for winter when they never worked to harvest themselves. This whole country is turning socialist.

      Other than the spending it all part, I agree 100 percent. My stuff is mine, yours is yours. WE both choose how we want to spend it. Others should not be stealing and spending it for us. It is EASY to spend someone else’s money.

      1. In the past year or so my business, architectural design, has quadrupled and I am channeling most of the money into tangibles. Things I can put my hands on. My wife and I now have about 2 years worth of everything in food, and various supplies. I am also stockpiling cash, precious metals, firearms and ammo, medications, etc. About 1/4 of my income is stored in the bank. If I drop dead today my wife has my bank code and can drain my account immediately. When I am gone my wife and son will have everything I’ve acquired and the gov’t thieves can blow my ass sideways.

        1. “Don’t steal. The government hates competition”. Truest statement ever. The mob ain’t got and never had shit on Uncle Sam.

  4. Millionaire tax? Really? Put away 8,000 per year into a 401k making a modest 5 percent a year from your mid 20’s until you retire and you EASILY have 1 million in a 401k. Now, say you retire at 65 (bwa hahaha, not happening as much anymore, but that is another topic for another time). but say you retire at 65 and live to 85. That is 20 years of retirement. Meaning 1 million divided by 20, thats 50,000 a year. Then you take taxes out, and you might keep 36,000 to 38,000 of your own money. Is that RICH and WEALTHY and a LIFE OF LUXERY to live off of 38k a year? Of your OWN MONEY that YOU SAVED?

    How about a STUPIDITY TAX? We could make TRILLIONS taxing stupid ass LIBERALS and RINO’s… That is IF they had any money, because most of those useless dipshits refuse to work.

    1. I retired at 62 (4 years ago) but still work at least 40+ hours per week, weekends too, depending. Why not? I enjoy what I do and have always thought of it more as a hobby than actual work. Attitude is everything. Find a job you enjoy and you’ll never work a day in your life. Oh yeah, all of my “work” is off the books. Fuck the middle man thief.

  5. The Commies also want to do away with the “Step up in basis”. This is the Tax rule that says that when you inherit Stock, the Taxable Cost resets to the Price of the Stock to the date it was transferred to you.
    For example, your maiden Aunt leaves you 200 shares of Microsoft. The price used to calculate the Capital Gain is not the $ 4.50 a share she paid 35 year ago. Instead the Basis resets to today’s price of $270 a share. They see a big Jackpot coming as Boomers die off and leave shares to their children and all that potential Capital gains tax goes poof when the the Basis changes.

    Fortunately there are enough Boomer Congress Critters that are also stockholders who want to pass on wealth to their own children. So there is probably little chance of that happening.

    Remember that when Congress talks about taxing the wealthy , that’s just the shiny object they want you to look at while they raise your Taxes. The money is in Taxing the middle classes. The 1% has better Tax lawyers and finance guys that can move faster than Congress can change the rules.

    I’m with Ghostsniper – I earned it, I’m going to spend it.

    1. The AlGoreCampaign let slip that their definition of “rich” was someone with a job.

  6. When you think about it, the “income tax” is really a “labor tax”, since you have to pay a tax for working.

  7. This one is vile. It basically forces families to suffer two losses, within weeks of each other.

    Its also why a lot of family farms get sold. With the inflation of property values in certain areas, kids have to sell the farm to pay the inheritance taxes, rather than keep it in the family.

    I am also going to get my tinfoil hat on here, but American’s productive labor is pledged as security against our debt’s. So the .gov HAS to keep the bulk of American’s on the hamster wheel. Otherwise we would have more Bertie Wooster’s. Which would at least give us the subject of better novels.

  8. Just wait until they get the idea of a Land Value Tax. That’s what La Sturgeon is threatening over here.

  9. BTW Inheritance tax (IHT) was one way the UK government prevented a revolution over here. Too much wealth was concentrated in too few hands and IHT forced the massive estates to be split and sold. WW1 made it a double whammy. However, I have a big problem with IHT: it is levied on what you leave rather than what someone inherits. I’d like to see an IHT exemption of £2M per person per year, so that if you have three children you can split £6M evenly amongst them. Anything over £2M would be taxed as regular income. The £2M figure comes from a doubling of £1M which is a ‘nice round figure’ and caters for inheriting from two people in the same tax year. This encourages the spreading of wealth. Some inheritors will prosper; some will not.

    1. Ironically, the death tax originated in feudal Europe. The reasoning behind it was that a serf’s or peasant’s death cost his lord his future corvee labor and taxes, so the lord had to be compensated for that awful loss, I shit you not. When you get right down to it, has anything changed except the “lord” to which death taxes are paid?

  10. I have been a practicing tax lawyer for 38 years, with a focus in estate planning.

    Causing death to constitute a capital gains recognition event is the worst proposed death tax bill I have ever seen.

    The good news, though, is that it would affect almost everyone (unless your parents are broke or in the joint), which means that the public rancor and outcry will be loud and broad-based.

    My idea to make the death tax go away forever is to remove the exemption entirely.

    That way, everyone (and not just wealthier people) would pay it.

    We would have a thoroughly reconstituted Congress if that was the case and Congress would be forced to repeal it.

    You cannot imagine how many adult children (who behave more like children than adults) I see routinely in probate court to fight with their siblings over the distribution of a $100,000 estate among 4 or 5 children. They all hire lawyers and try to use the probate process as the crucible in which age-old family fights and hurt feelings are fully and finally resolve. Sometimes the Judge has to get a bailiff involved to make sure things don’t get physical. These people are already highly pissed off. Let the government take 20-40% (if the capital gains rate is raised to that of ordinary income) and see them really seethe.

    In spite of the fact that I have done a lot of death tax planning over the years and still do some of it, I am firmly in the “Repeal” camp.

    It’s a confiscatory tax or, more accurately, theft.

    As with all income and asset-based taxes, the taxpayer endures all of the risk in creating and keeping wealth, but the government is the silent partner in the process.

  11. The tax is most unfair on families where mom and dad have built up a family business that is now worth millions on paper.
    Mom and dad are killed in an accident and now the children have to scrape up a couple of million dollars to pay the taxes.
    Nobody keeps that kind of money around as most of the company’s assets are in equipment and property/buildings, so the heirs are forced to sell everything ay fire sale prices just to pay the taxes.

  12. My legacy will be one shovel for each of my heirs with encrypted coordinates written on them.

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