(10-27-2020, 09:00 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote: On a side note, the concept alone of an estate tax is atrocious. 

"For deaths occurring between 2018 and 2025, estates that exceed $11.2 million are subject to a 40% estate tax at time of death, increased from $5.6 million previously. For a married couple aggregating their exemptions, an estate exceeding $22.4 million is subject to a 40% estate tax at time of death"


The government is essentially taxing something that has already been taxed to death in the first place. The death tax is the biggest sham going in this country.

Death is one of the most convoluted subjects in the law.
You have wealthy people trying to avoid estate taxes.
And you have middle class people trying to look destitute so they can qualify for medicaid before they die, rather than spend all their savings on private care.

It's a mess and there's room for improvement.

But the double taxation argument is the intellectual equivalent of monkeys flinging feces.  All money flows are circular.  Every step in the flow is prone to taxation.  Any tax could be construed as a double or triple or 100x tax if you're already motivated to think about it that way.

Marty is right: The decision to tax inheritances is about creating a society based on merit, an egalitarian society.  Otherwise you have lords and ladies in all but name (and this is already happening).  Thomas Paine, the Englishman who helped kick off the American Revolution with his pamphlet Common Sense, wanted to tax inheritances at 100%!  That's extreme, of course, but it shows you that having at least some inheritance tax is part of our founding values.

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