Ok, I get that the GOP and the Libertarians and the Tea partiers (and isnt that a strange combo) all despise welfare* and any other sort of aid. They think that it’s not right for them to work 40 hours a week and pay taxes just so as some useless wastrel who has never worked a honest day in their life can sit around all day watching TV and eat bon-bons.
Ok, I got that. Fair dinkum. *Didn’t earn it, don’t deserve it. *(bunch of bullshit since we’re a civilized nation that’s not gonna let the disabled and such starve, but hey, I understand the basics of where they are coming from). To them that earned it, gets to enjoy it. “No workee, no payee” (or whatever racist BS they think of).:rolleyes:
Sure.
But then, they all want to get rid of the estate tax, which means that some useless wastrel who has never worked a honest day in their life can sit around all day watching TV and eat bon-bons. :dubious:
I mean- what has some heir done? Their daddy worked his hands to the bone suppressing the workers, doing stock manipulation, insider trading and what-not sure. But all the heir has done is get lucky as Daddy was too proud to ask for a DNA test, thus Bongo the Pool boy’s son can be some useless wastrel who has never worked a honest day in their life and sit around all day watching TV and eat bon-bons.
Riddle me that.
even tho for most purposes it ended In 1996, with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
The rather obvious difference is in whose money the wastrel is spending.
Not fighting your OP, the welfare recipient is spending public money which is forcibly taken from the taxpayer. The recipient of an estate is spending private money that was given freely from the deceased.
Lol. The Welfare recipient is spending money he was freely given by the taxpayer. It’s just an extended family of sorts. Besides, with the modernization of industry that is coming you might as well accept and give free monies to people in the form of citizen income because there is no way you will be able to fruitfully employ everyone in a capitalist society.
As the need for labor recedes while effectiveness increases the only two possible solutions are:
For new content I will add that some heirs, given the estate, will continue to invest it and use it in ways that create jobs that will help people get off the public funds. Yes, some heirs are total wastrels and little more than a poor use for perfectly good transplant material. But some are raised to manage business and create businesses and some surpass whatever was achieved by the ancestor they benefited from. Some of the ones hurt the worst are smaller company owners/heirs who can, and very well may, provide the best job opportunities for the more disadvantaged among us. Those are damaged as much under the current estate tax system as the mega-rich we can agree to hate.
Write an estate tax that differentiates the actual good job creators from the ones who suppress the workers, do stock manipulation, insider trading and what-not and it will have my full support.
You don’t even need an estate tax per se. What is an estate tax good for? It’s a one time transfer tax isn’t it? Or if you mean one payed every month…still one can just move to a smaller place and still do what you suggest.
A tax on wealth mixed in with your good old friend inflation fixes that problem much better than taxing peoples homes. Why should the home of someone (a form of wealth) be worse than anything else?
I can alter my will if my child turns out to be a wastrel. I cannot similarly prevent my money from going to a meth head.
Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about this. Did you know my son is getting straight A’s? (If not, I think you are the only person in the Western hemisphere I haven’t told).
I may be misreading you. If I am not, may I request that, if you are going to insult my son and belittle his accomplishments, you do so in the Pit where I can respond?
You are misreading me, I think. That is, I was just kidding. I am not seriously suggesting that your son is on meth and you should be very proud of his grades.
Best wishes for continued success to Shodan’s son. Some things just go beyond partisanship and this is one.
The estate tax is in my opinion the fairest tax there is. Getting a windfall without having worked for it should be taxed. The whose money argument is a red herring- there is a safety net and we give people food and money. When we do so it becomes their food and money. When they get on their feet, they’ll be taxed like the rest of us.
Comparing the welfare to estate taxes is apples and oranges.
The government will raise enough taxes to pay for itself. The question is where will the taxes come from. Tax legislation attempts to put some sort of logic behind it but at the end of the day, the government has to pay for itself, and will eventually just say “fuck it” we’re taking what we need.
For me the difference is who you are working to support. If I manage to become wealthy from a business I started would I rather be able to make sure my kid never has to work or someone I’ve never met? I don’t think any one would rather support a stranger then their child.
If we got rid of welfare and the inheritance tax I could pass more money on to my kid. It’s not an illogical position it’s just a bit selfish.
Yes and no. The estate it taxed, if it is sufficiently large, partially to keep capital gains from evaporating, untaxed, just because the original owner died.
No one is taxed for what they inherit. It’s tax free. The estate is taxed before disbursals are completed.
Considering how large an estate has to be before it is taxed, I can’t imagine how it’s possible to get most people worked up over it.
Let’s say your father started a business and when you were old enough you joined the family business. Over the next 35 years you and your father grow it into a company with a value of $250 million. Your father dies at age 85. You are now 60 and your children have also joined the business.
Upon your father’s death, the estate tax due for you to inherit your father’s company is $100 million. You or the company don’t really have that amount of cash sitting around, as your father has always reinvested the profits back into the company to continue grow it.
You have no choice but to sell your legacy business in order to pay the estate tax. Sure you ended up with $150 million in cash after all is said in done, but you and your children wanted to continue to grow the business as a family enterprise.
Well, you see, as far anyone can tell, this has never happened. Because of course, if you still had a Sole Proprietorship worth $250MM (or even 25MM) , you’re such a sodding moron that there’s no way it could ever succeed in the first place. Not to mention if you didnt follow the advice of your lawyer and set ups trusts etc, again- you’re a sodding moron. grantor retained annuity trusts are a thing.
And altho the top tax rate is indeed %40, the* effective *rate averages 16%. 16% = a $40 million bill, which can be paid off over 15 years with extremely low interest. The most common rate is 5%. Still, that couldnt happen, assuming the dad had enuf brains to blow his nose.
No one could ever find a instance of a family farm or business having to be sold in order to pay the estate tax. (USA federal taxes)
Only roughly 20 small business and small farm estates nationwide owed any estate tax in 2013, according to TPC.[10] TPC’s analysis defined a small-business or small farm estate as one with more than half its value in a farm or business and with the farm or business assets valued at less than $5 million. Furthermore, TPC estimates those roughly 20 estates owed just 4.9 percent of their value in tax, on average.[11]* http://www.cbpp.org/research/ten-facts-you-should-know-about-the-federal-estate-tax
Estate taxes are not really taxes on family owned farms & businesses. They are taxes on unrealized gain on stocks.
Alan Viard, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who specializes in federal tax and budget policies, dismissed arguments that the estate tax is killing family farms and small businesses. He said the research by the Tax Center is solid and noted that heirs can take up to 14 years to pay off inheritance tax debts.
I still think some kind of “net worth” tax would be more equitable. It’s not that the rich are few and we should be envious and greedy of their wealth, it’s that there is a finite amount of wealth, and they are hoarding it to the detriment of millions of their own countrymen. Screw 'em and hard. Welfare mooches are the exception. Full time minimum wage can’t even pay rent & buy food, and you can bet that whomever allows their business to pay minimum wage is living large. If you work hard and smart, sure, you deserve some luxury. And it’s reasonable to pay employees based on skill level and responsibility. But I think it’s absolutely sick when a CEO can afford to pay cash for the latest Bentley when he has employees are having a hard time paying for the alternator that just crapped out on their 3rd hand 30 year old Honda.
Bit of a rant, slightly off-topic. Sorry. Applause for the successful, but fuck the rich.
Thanks for the clarification. The heir doesn’t pay the tax, he just receives the after tax remains. I shall try to be more precise in the future. In a broad sense you could say the heir pays the tax by virtue of receiving a reduced amount, but you are more correct than I.
The conservative view – and I’m not a conservative but I kind of agree with it – is you should be able to do what you want with the money you earned. Conservatives aren’t against charities. They’re not even, as far as I can tell, against the idea of giving money to those who don’t “deserve” it. They’re against the idea of someone taking their money and deciding for them what to do with it. So if you give your own money freely to orphans or your lazy kid, that’s fine and dandy. If you point a gun at someone and say “give me your money or you’ll go to jail”, then where that money goes is of prime interest to society. There are precious few things you can spend money on that justifies forcibly taking it from the one who earned it.
Now, there’s a lot of hypocrisy in the conservative cannon. For example, why is giving trillions of taxpayer dollars to a group of men with tanks and guns to kill foreigners justified, but not millions to feed and clothe poor Americans? But taken as a snippet, and not a whole, the conservative position here makes sense. Forcibly taking money from people because you think you can better decide what to spend it on is pretty bad overall, and there are only a few things you can spend that money on to justify taking it (but try getting any two people to agree on what those are!)
TLDR: It’s not giving money to poor people that’s the problem, it’s who decides to do so. If you earned it, it should be your decision, barring a few controversial exceptions.
Congratulations on raising a good kid.