On May 20, 5:27Â*pm, "Sid9" wrote:
"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. Â*The Kennedy's inherited
their wealth.

Inherited wealth is the worst kind. Â*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. Â*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. Â*If I can, I
will look for others with more substantial details. Â*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

Fromhttp://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.

Â*"...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 Â*"farms lost to the inheritance tax" Â*or any such.

The last thing I will post - from http://www.Americanforests.org -
probably not the kind of stats you are looking for (it sounds like you
have already convinced yourself that this scenario never happens, so
maybe no stats would be of value), but it shows that the effect has
not gone unnoticed by people who pay greater attention than either of
us...

"Family forest owners have generally been bystanders to the dramatic
transformations in industrial timberland ownership, but they are
inevitably being drawn into the vortex. They own 59 percent of the
nation's forests in holdings that range from less than 10 acres to
more than a thousand. They have traditionally depended on local mills
to market their products, generally small-volume sawlogs and low-value
material sold to pulp and paper mills.

As industrial owners close their domestic mills and move their
operations offshore, where labor costs a tenth of the U.S. rates,
small landowners are left without a market for their forest products.
That cuts their incentive to manage their holdings as timberlands and
increases the temptation to sell to developers.

America's mom and pop forest owners are also aging. Half are at least
55 years old, according to a study by the National Commission on
Science for Sustainable Forestry. When their land changes hands,
through inheritance or sales, it follows a trend that mirrors the
timber industry and goes into the hands of multiple owners. By 2020,
the study predicts, the number of private timberland owners will
expand from today's 9.9 million to 12 million.

Each additional owner increases the potential for forest
fragmentation. And each fragment will be more difficult to manage as
timberland. Within the next decade, the science commission projects
that America will lose 10 million acres of private forestlands, an
area larger than New Hampshire and Connecticut combined. By 2050 an
additional 13 million acres will be lost, according to Forests on the
Edge.

"The trends are not good," says the American Forest Foundation's
Simpson. He calls this drift toward development America's invisible
forest crisis."

Taxing the crap out of landholdings when an owner dies is not going to
help this situation.

I did not have to look very hard for this information. Ranching,
farmland, mineral resource lands, fillable wetlands, desert lands and
many others *may* experience similar situations. You may have your
noble cause to attend to, but let's not make believe that even the
best of intentions will not have unintended consequences. I want the
land preserved in its most natural state, and that will not happen
anytime it is sold to the highest bidder by force of economics.

Last word is yours.

Bruce Jensen