"bpnjensen" wrote in message
...
On May 20, 5:14 pm, bpnjensen wrote:
On May 20, 4:04 pm, "Sid9" wrote:
"bpnjensen" wrote in message
...
On May 20, 3:17 pm, dave wrote:
ZNUYBV wrote:
On May 19, 11:30 am, DEFCON 88 wrote:
On May 19, 8:59 am, dave wrote: ∅baMa∅ Tse Dung
wrote:
One of the many shallow statements that sound good-- if you
don't
stop
and think about it-- is that "at some point, you have made
enough
money."
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Amassing wealth beyond your needs is immoral and Unamerican.
Nonsense. Restricting people's freedom to acquire as much wealth
as
they want (unless obtained through criminal activity) is immoral
and
Unamerican, and reeks of the typical jealousy of success
exhibited by
the Communist liberal/"progressive" left.
Family dynasties are Unamerican.
You mean like the Kennedys?
The Kennedy's got their wealth honestly. The Kennedy's inherited
their wealth.
Inherited wealth is the worst kind. Restore the inheritance tax
back to
Ronald Reagan era levels.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
I won;r argue the basic point, although I have my reservations...but
assuming this is correct...
With one cautionary note -
When people are land-rich and money-poor (forest owners, ranchers,
farmers, wetland owners, other fundamentally responsible stewards), a
large inheritance tax frequently forces the inheritor (who legally
has
no choice) to rapidly liquidate the good land to pay the tax bill -
sometimes farmland, sometimes natural habitat or even de facto
wilderness, and this turns it into subdivisons or other
nonproductive,
non-habitat land. This unintended consequence has been repeated
countless times, and some provision should be made to forestall this
problem.
.
.
Got any statistics for this claim?
This sounds like the "family farm" story.
Here is at least one website that mentions this effect. If I can, I
will look for others with more substantial details. It is not hard to
imagine this happening; as I mentioned family ranches here in Alameda
County and some sustainable timber lands have been lost to inheritance
tax.
http://www.klt.org/tax.htm
Bruce Jensen
From http://www.saveland.org ~
"Donating conservation land to a land trust is a wonderful way to
share its beauty with future generations. The donation can even be set
up in a way that allows you to continue to live on the land or to
receive a life income.
Doing nothing to protect it may doom your land to development. Why?
Estate taxes are one reason. Federal taxes can be as high as 55% of a
property's fair market value, virtually forcing heirs to sell it. And,
of course, future owners may be compelled by ever-increasing property
values—or simply by a lack of appreciation for the land—to sell it for
development."
..
..
So far you've provided no statistics.
"...Neil Harl, an Iowa State University economist whose tax advice has made
him a household name among Midwest farmers, said he had searched far and
wide but had never found a farm lost because of estate taxes. "It's a myth,"
he said.
Even one of the leading advocates for repeal of estate taxes, the American
Farm Bureau Federation, said it could not cite a single example of a farm
lost because of estate taxes...."
Find the complete article he
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0408-02.htm
The same applies to family owned businesses.....biggest con job ever on most
Americans
GOOGLE "farms lost to the inheritance tax" or any such.