The estate tax is an abomination. I don’t care how much wealth a person has accumulated in a lifetime. It is reprehensible for government to confiscate a lifetime of ones accumulated assets. Now Sanders wants to take as much as 65%
Once you pay your taxes along the way, that should be it. But in the 21st century, the political far left the likes of Sanders wants higher income citizens to bail out Social Security, to pay a wealth tax, higher income taxes and now much higher estate taxes as well.
There is nothing fair about it any more than subsidies of various kinds should be available to people who don’t need them.
Lest you think I protest too much, I will not be affected by any of the higher proposed taxes.
The current maximum federal estate tax rate is 40%. The 95% Act proposes to increase the estate tax rate to 45%, once a deceased person’s taxable estate exceeds $3.5 million, and 50% and higher when the amount subject to tax exceeds $10 million, maxing out at 65% for estates over $1 billion. But that increase would not apply until 2022. In addition to the above exemption and tax changes, gifting of up to $15,000 per year per person would be limited to $30,000 per donor per year for gifts to irrevocable trusts or of interests in certain “flow through entities” beginning in 2022.
Source: Wealthy Should Act Now to Prepare for Bernie Sanders’s Estate Tax Proposal | Kiplinger
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Bernie and his ilk confirm everyday that everything you earn, everything you own belongs to the government. We tax your property, we tax your income, and, even death won’t allow you and your heirs to evade taxes. It is why, in government speak, they call the deductions and exemptions you and I take on our various tax returns “tax expenditures” – as if the government is spending money they already own, to let you have some. .
I used to argue with my brother over whether this was a “death tax” or an “estate tax”. No need to argue anymore – it is both. It is both a tax levied on accumulated assets at death (a success tax) and a tax levied on your beneficiaries – reducing the amount of the gift you have designated for others.
And, no, we don’t know what that tax will look like in the future. Take the income tax, please. In 1913, the top tax rate was 7% on incomes above $500,000 (equivalent to $13.1 million in 2020 dollars) and a total of $28.3 million was collected. It clearly was a “millionaires and billionares” tax when implemented, with a threshold estate of over $30MM in 2020 dollars – the kind that Bernie favors. However, as we saw over the past 100+ years, you can’t fund a federal government with taxes that only apply to “millionaires and billionaires”.
Here, the estate tax has consistently applied to less than 2% of American estates at death. But, this tax has been around since 1916, and once the discussion starts on how to carve the taxpayer turkey, who knows what it will ultimately look like.
Vote Democratic. How dare you attempt to pass money that is not yours, money that belongs to the “state”, to relatives and others. Who are YOU to control such an allocation, who are you to decide?
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