# Gift and Estate Tax, a good thing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 13, 2002, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940 "2002-06-13T22:26:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2002, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/101 "2002-06-22T18:44:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Debaser \* > Even without an increase, the estate tax will grow because of inflation. As someone pointed out, the million dollar limit will soon be reached by many homeowners who are argueably not “rich”. And, the plan is to raise the exemption over the next 10 years. The idea that the estate tax was in need of some reforms of this type enjoyed widespread support. Indeed, the Republicans in Congress rejected one attempt at reform a few years ago because they didn’t want to lose the “farm and small business” poster children in their fight to give a tax break to the very wealthy via a total repeal. > [@](#): > > Nope. I am your typical untravelled American. 😃 > You can’t be suggesting that if I spent a week, or year, in say Ireland than I could comment on the current economic situation in the world with impunity. I was trying to show that I was stating opinion by saying “I would argue”, “I would imagine”, “IMHO” if we were to have a discussion on the US vs. Socialism. Well, no I am not claiming that going on vacation in Ireland would then give you that impunity. However, I am amused that people who seem so convinced of their opinion that the American way is better in all respects than the ways chosen by other countries (and thus that we have nothing to learn from these other countries) tend to very often be those who haven’t actually had any basis for comparison. To be blunt, I find this attitude to be one of the worst combinations of ignorance and arrogance. [“I am ignorant enough that I have very little idea…certainly no firsthand knowledge…of how things work in these other countries and yet I am arrogant enough to believe that we are the best and we have nothing to learn from them.”] And, I guess it is hopeless to try to convince you not to call the rest of the Western world “socialist”. When I was in Denmark and Sweden, private enterprise seemed to be alive and well. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2002, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/102 "2002-06-22T20:30:50Z")
As a postscript on the day-of-reckoning when the trust fund is depleted, the latest news is that the estimated date has moved out to 2041: [http://www.uaw.org/solidarity/02/0502/front01.cfm](http://www.uaw.org/solidarity/02/0502/front01.cfm) This continues the trend since 1996 of the day of reckoning advancing an average of 2 years for every year of real time. (I don’t need to tell you that at this rate, we will never actually get to the day-of-reckoning.) ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/103 "2002-06-23T02:52:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pldennison \* > \*\* > > Er, well, your gift for hyperbole is going to get the best of you one day, Scylla. Coca-Cola Enterprises’ most recent quarterly income statement (for the quarter ending 3/29/02) shows $3.642 billion in revenues, with $10 million in after-tax income. \*\* No doubt, but it’s take a bigger gun and a better man than you. Coca Cola Enterprises (Femsa) Is a seperate comapny from COca Cola (KO.) ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/104 "2002-06-23T03:11:36Z")
Jshore: As I said, the 1/3 bureacratic waste number is independently corroborated by both the Cato Institute and the Congressional Budget Office. Frankly I really don’t care if you “doubt it.” By itself, that’s a meaningless argument. I can doubt 2 +2 = 4 but that don’t mean shit. In other words put up or shut up. If you have a cite for a better figure, or an argument to doubt mine, please povide it, or otherwise have the decency to accept it as provided. I am the manager of an office for a fortune 500 company, so you’re wrong on that count as well. I looked at your cites. The first two are indexes for articles about SS. Thanks a lot! I write articles about SS myself. If you bother to read your cites as I have, you’'ll see they say exactly what I said. The next two cites are for a book (which I’ve read btw, have you read it?) which states that some people are overrepresenting the crises in SS. I agree with many of the premises of the book, and in fact, it is based on that very book that I chose the figure of 40 years. SS as it exists right now, can not continue for another forrty years. You say it’s ok for another 35. Fine. That’s not what I said. I said it was a mathematical impossiblity for it to continue for another forty years. All four of your cites support that contention, with the outside being 32 years (if you’d read the book but by that time SS = 80% of the federal budget!) And then the SUVs. Jeez. At least I had the class to admit when I’d made a bullshit statemtent. ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/105 "2002-06-23T03:25:59Z")
Yeah, you’re right, Scylla. Wanna know what KO’s most recent quarterlies said? They said after-tax income of $851 million on revenues of $4.079 billion, with SG&A of $1.43 billion. So it still falls about $600 million short of even $10 billion, let alone tens. I can pop into Multex and look up others if you’d like to try again. Ford Motor Co.? Definitely tens of billions. Sears? Close–fell a bit short last quarter, but racked up $12 billion in revenues in Q4 '01. But Nike or Coke? Nah. Even leftist whipping boy McDonald’s can only pull up just under $4 billion per quarter in before-tax revenues. ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/106 "2002-06-23T03:32:53Z")
Oh, by the way, I was trying to do you a freakin’ favor so that somebody who **supports** the estate tax couldn’t pop in and tell you you had your numbers wrong, but I forgot that when you get yourself going, you tend to be a little indiscriminate about where you shit. “Thanks” would have been sufficient. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/107 "2002-06-23T18:43:59Z")
I just read through all of this thread, and I must have missed it. Why can’t we treat gift and estate inheritance as simple income and pay taxes on it like that? That seems like a terrific idea. I also find it amusing that people who get paid to find ways of avoiding estate taxes are promoting estate taxes. I mean, no shit. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/108 "2002-06-23T20:53:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Scylla \* > Jshore: > > As I said, the 1/3 bureacratic waste number is independently corroborated by both the Cato Institute and the Congressional Budget Office. Frankly I really don’t care if you “doubt it.” By itself, that’s a meaningless argument. I can doubt 2 +2 = 4 but that don’t mean shit. Come off your high horse, Scylla. All you have provided to support this “1/3” claim is a statement from the Cato Institute which is completely vague as to source or even meaning! If the CBO actually corroborates it and explains how “waste” is defined, then give us a cite. How am I supposed to dispute a figure that is pulled out of thin air from a libertarian think-tank with no explanation of even what they mean? Come off it! You are the one who needs to put up or shut up. I am not dismissing the 1/3 figure out-of-hand but I ain’t gonna accept it on blind faith because Cato says so! > [@](#): > > I am the manager of an office for a fortune 500 company, so you’re wrong on that count as well. And your company is not bureaucratic and wasteful? Would your employees agree? > [@](#): > > SS as it exists right now, can not continue for another forrty years. You say it’s ok for another 35. Fine. That’s not what I said. I said it was a mathematical impossiblity for it to continue for another forty years. All four of your cites support that contention, with the outside being 32 years (if you’d read the book but by that time SS = 80% of the federal budget!) You are missing the forest through the trees here, Scylla. The point is that you claimed it was a **mathematical impossibility** for it to continue for another 40 years. That is simply ridiculous. The latest estimate by the trust fund, as I noted above, has it solvent for another 39 years and the date has been moving out at the average rate of 2 years every year. I am not guaranteeing it will be solvent for 40…These projects are a lot of black magic. But to say it is a mathematical impossibility is just utter hogwash. And, with some rather simple fixes (e.g., not having an income cutoff above which it cuts out), it could apparently be made to be solvent, under current projections, for almost the entire 75 year projection time span. You must have a very unique definition of mathematical impossibilities. > [@](#): > > Jeez. At least I had the class to admit when I’d made a bullshit statemtent. Well, I admitted to you that my statement was oversimplified. But I also had to point out that you had misquoted what I said and also that my larger point is that waste is inevitable. And I think driving to the corner grocery store surrounded by 3500 pounds of metal, glass, etc. is wasteful of resources by any reasonable definition of the word even if it can be justified. My larger point here is that you seem to have two definitions of waste…one, reserved for the government, in which we accept anything defined as waste by a libertarian think-tank and another, reserved for private enterprise, where nothing is waste if it turns a profit. **erislover** : My short answer to you would be along the lines of what we have been arguing with Uncle Beer…I think it is perfectly justifiable to tax different sources of income differently. And, treating inheritance as regular income would be way more regressive than is currently done (unless you put in some special exemption) and would way excerbate the very problems that those opposed to the estate tax like to dwell on for political purposes, i.e., people with modest farms or businesses who would have to sell them to pay the tax. I am not saying there is no version of treating it like income that I could endorse but like I’ve said before, I don’t subscribe to the view that “inequality isn’t growing fast enough” and thus I don’t see the reason to make taxes less progressive. As for your final point, are you claiming that Gates, Buffett and the others that signed the petition are people who get paid to work on people’s estate tax? And, if so, is it true that the money that they earn from this offsets what they will have to pay in estate taxes (or donate to charity)? ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/109 "2002-06-23T21:33:20Z")
> [@](#): > > As for your final point, are you claiming that Gates, Buffett and the others that signed the petition are people who get paid to work on people’s estate tax? No. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2002, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/110 "2002-06-23T21:38:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jshore \* > All you have provided to support this “1/3” claim is a statement from the Cato Institute Actually, going back, I now realize that you said you had also seen the number at Cato but the link you actually found and provided was not to Cato but to The Political Edge (a website that makes Cato look thoughtful and careful with the truth by comparison…I enjoyed looking at their take on global warming!) > [@](#): > > These projects are a lot of black magic. Make that “projections”. > [@](#): > > And I think driving to the corner grocery store surrounded by 3500 pounds of metal, glass, etc. is wasteful of resources by any reasonable definition of the word even if it can be justified. Just to be completely clear, this statement is made with the same caveats as before…i.e., I’m not imagining that you are transporting your family of 5 to the store where you are going to purchase 10 days worth of groceries to feed them. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/111 "2002-06-24T00:58:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pldennison \* > \*\*Oh, by the way, I was trying to do you a freakin’ favor so that somebody who **supports** the estate tax couldn’t pop in and tell you you had your numbers wrong, but I forgot that when you get yourself going, you tend to be a little indiscriminate about where you shit. “Thanks” would have been sufficient. \*\* I was trying to be facetious with the little “better man than you” comment. That Coca Cola Enterprises was the Femsa arm was a meaningless distinction that I through in there to highlight the facetiousness. Problem is I’d been hosting a housewarming party and drinking Margaritas all afternoon, and Ummm. Well, Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/112 "2002-06-24T01:05:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Scylla \* > \*\*Jshore: > > In other words put up or shut up. ] \*\* Gee. I was really polite. > [@](#): > > \*\* I write articles about SS myself. \*\* This is such an exageration that it’s a flashood. I’ve written memos. > [@](#): > > \*\*The next two cites are for a book (which I’ve read btw, have you read it?) \*\* I haven’t read this book. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/113 "2002-06-24T01:17:32Z")
jshore: You know that figure came both from the Cato institute, **as well** as Congresses own budgetary office. You keep telling me you doubt it but you don’t offer anything better, or even a reason except that you don’t like the Cato institute and it sounds vague. If you cause to doubt it, or wish to challenge either Congress or the Cato institute, please do so by presenting better evidence. Failing that, the figure stands. Forgive me again for not speaking clearly. Obviously there are ways that SS could continue. My “mathematical impossiblity” is referring to SS in it’s present form, and assumes that we don’t go killing off old people to avoid making the payments. Things like that. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/114 "2002-06-24T01:24:11Z")
**Scylla:** _As I said, the 1/3 bureacratic waste number is independently corroborated by both the Cato Institute and the Congressional Budget Office._ Could you provide a cite for either of those corroborations, please? I’ve been combing both the [Cato Institute website](http://www.cato.org/index.html) and the [CBO](http://www.cbo.gov/) site searching for “33% government waste”, “federal budget waste”, and similar keywords, and I have not found evidence of this anywhere. I’ve come across various references to pork-barrel spending and estimates of what it may cost, including “4% of the federal budget” and “20% of non-defense discretionary spending”. I’ve also seen references to a poll indicating that Americans **believe** that up to 48% of federal revenues, on average, are wasted. But I have yet to see any **facts** supporting the contention that “one-third of every federal budget dollar is wasted”, or supporting **any** quantitative estimate of the percentage of government waste, for that matter. I think that you are either going to have to back up this “1/3” figure more reliably or just abandon it. [added in preview] _You know that figure came both from the Cato institute, as well as Congresses own budgetary office._ The point is that we **don’t** know that: we know that you claim it to be true, but you haven’t showed us any actual evidence that it is true. \*You keep telling me you doubt it but you don’t offer anything better, or even a reason except that you don’t like the Cato institute and it sounds vague. If you cause to doubt it, or wish to challenge either Congress or the Cato institute, please do so by presenting better evidence. Failing that, the figure stands. \* :eek: Good heavens, **Scylla** , that’s an argument worthy of **december** : “my assertion should be accepted as true unless you can explicitly disprove it.” Sorry, that isn’t the way a debate works. You said it, you back it up, and not just by insisting that we know it’s true because you said so. (Geez, this debate has kind of gone all over the shop, hasn’t it? We started out talking about the estate tax, but somehow we got off onto issues like whether Social Security is justifiable or how much of the federal budget is wasted by federal bureaucracy. I don’t quite understand how this happened.) ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/115 "2002-06-24T01:43:35Z")
Kimstu: > [@](#): > > The point is that we don’t know that: we know that you claim it to be true, but you haven’t showed us any actual evidence that it is true. Jshore asked for a cite. I got him one with the 1/3 figure stating it was Congress’ own number. If you wish to contend that the author falsoified the statement and it is not true, please do so by presenting better figures, or a cite that shows The Congressional budgetary offices figure to disagree with what the article said. Yes, it’s a second figure. Find a firsthand figure that disagrees with it and then you’re saying something. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/116 "2002-06-24T02:05:55Z")
**Scylla:** \*Jshore asked for a cite. I got him one with the 1/3 figure stating it was Congress’ own number. If you wish to contend that the author falsoified the statement and it is not true, please do so by presenting better figures, or a cite that shows The Congressional budgetary offices figure to disagree with what the article said. \* Well, when **jshore** originally made that request, this is what you said: > [@](#): > > Sure. This cite will tell you that 33 cents out of every dollar is lost to bureaucracy: > > I also saw it at the Cato institiute last year, but I can’t find it there. > > [http://www.thepoliticaledge.com/columnists/skelly/2001-04-13/](http://www.thepoliticaledge.com/columnists/skelly/2001-04-13/) And this is what that article by Jeffrey Skilly says about budgetary waste: > [@](#): > > However, it has been reported that government bureaucracy wastes $0.33 for every dollar it collects. No attribution to the CBO, the Cato Institute, or anyplace else. In other words, your supporting evidence for your assertion that 33% of the federal budget is wasted consists of the following: 1. Some guy named Skilly claims that some unnamed source has reported this to be the case. 2. You think you remember reading last year that the Cato Institute said the same thing and attributed it to the CBO. Now you want to argue that on the basis of that “evidence”, the rest of us have to accept that 33% figure unless we can explicitly disprove its validity. Nice try, **Scylla** , but not good enough. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/117 "2002-06-24T03:35:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Scylla \* > > This is such an exageration that it’s a flashood. I’ve written memos… > > I haven’t read this book. Boy, you’ve gotta start laying off those margueritas! [Can I have the recipe?!] 😉 But on to serious stuff, as I’ve pointed out and **kimstu** reiterates, the CBO is **not** mentioned with respect to the 33% figure. [I think you are confusing it with the $1.20 to $1.60 figure, which I didn’t dispute although I did want to understand more about what they were actually saying because my impression is that it was actually a calculation of how much money was taken out of the economy by the dollar of tax but perhaps not with any accounting of what subsequently happened to that dollar…I.e., it might apply if the government taxed folks and then burned the money (which I know you are claiming they are essentially doing, but even “burning” it by giving it to bureaucrats does generate, as I have pointed out, some economic activity). Admittedly, this is unclear and I was trying to get more details about this figure, without success, from CBO. But again, this is all unrelated to the disputed 33% figure.] And, as I alluded to above, I now am even less inclined to believe this completely unexplained and undocumented “33%” figure than I was when it came from Cato now that I’ve read more of Skilly on that The Political Edge website. [He made the mistake of discussing global warming, a subject which I feel I know a fair bit about the state of the science of and, to put it mildly, he is completely full of it on that.] ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/118 "2002-06-24T13:32:21Z")
I guess I haven’t made myself clear. If you challenge the figure in my cite, you will have to find a better figure from a better source. Just saying that you don’t like it doesn’t cut the mustard. As far as I can see, you simply don’t like it on general principles. Produce a contradictory cite that is better substantiated, and then you have an argument which I will address. Failing that, I won’t. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/119 "2002-06-24T18:12:55Z")
LOL. I think you’ve made yourself clear, I just don’t think they agree. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2002, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940/120 "2002-06-24T19:06:18Z")
Scylla, The purpose of this board is to fight ignorance, not promote it. You cited a figure from an extremely biased source…a figure which is stated in a vague way (“it has been reported that…”) and is further ambiguous in that it does not even define what the term they are using means. This makes it essentially meaningless. **kimstu** and I have generously tried to find a better source for this figure so that we can verify and understand it but have been unable to do so. What we are left with is the fact that Jeffrey Skilly, a man who is completely off the deep end on such things on the science of global warming, claims that “it has been reported that government bureaucracy wastes $0.33 for every dollar it collects.” Therefore, I trust that any reasonable person reading this thread will conclude that the figure you have quoted remains completely unsubstantiated and cannot be trusted…It is essentially worthless. As to finding another figure, if I could find one that was from a verifiable source then I would quote it. However, my standards are not so low that I will just quote anything. To paraphrase what Will Rogers said [about the President at the time (Coolidge, Hoover?)], “It’s not what he doesn’t know that scares me but what he does know that just ain’t so.” Or, in other words, it is better to admit that we don’t have a good figure on government waste than to just believe anything fed to us. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gift-and-estate-tax-a-good-thing/113940.md?page=7)