On 04-23-09, BOB KLAHN said to TIM RICHARDSON:


TR> Democrats to a tee! Democrats are so tax-happy, they will
TR> even tax a person right into their grave and beyond! Or do
TR> you think taxing someone's money via the `death tax' isn't
TR> taxing someone `beyond' their grave!


BK>Other than the fact that there is no such tax in this country,
BK>your comment was pretty well meaningless.


Here is the reply to this outright lie of Klahn's I promised earlier:


By the way...Klahn also posted this up in his echo, and I accidently replied
to it there.


I intended to reply to it here. I wasn't going to reply to it at all until I
also saw it in here as well. Klahn trying to scare up some action in `his'
echo. where I do not post if I can help it. Guess I'll have to pay more
attention to the `Area' part of the message header from now on.


Fate of Estate Tax Imperils Obama’s Ambitions


Published: April 11, 2009


The death tax is the issue that simply will not die.


Fifteen years after Republican strategists put Democrats on the defensive by
sticking that pejorative label on the federal estate tax, Democrats are still
struggling with how to handle the levy on assets left behind, the one that
conservatives portray as the Internal Revenue Service reaching beyond the
grave.


Studies show that the tax hits merely a sliver of wealthy American families. A
proposal by President Obama would leave it at current levels, affecting only
estates valued at more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for
couples.


But now some Democrats have joined Republicans to call for setting the
threshold even higher, in a rebellion that could have important consequences
not just for the future of the death tax but also for Mr. Obama’s efforts to
pay for his ambitious policy agenda.


If that Republican-backed plan is approved, it could deprive Mr. Obama of
about $100 billion for his initiatives on health care, energy and education
when alternative sources of revenue are already dwindling. That prospect is
plain outrageous to top Democrats, who see efforts to spare the wealthy as
particularly ill-timed given the economic pain being experienced by many of
lesser means.


"This isn’t for the wealthy, this is for the super-wealthy," the Senate
majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said as the Senate took up
the estate tax issue during its budget deliberations. "Even in the best of
times, there is no question that we could find a better use for an extra $100
billion."


But 10 Democrats, led by Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, defied Mr. Reid.


They joined with Republicans to urge an increase in the value of estates
exempt from the tax above the level backed by Mr. Obama (to $5 million for
individuals and $10 million for couples) and a cut in the maximum tax rate (to
35 percent from the current 45 percent).


Unless Congress acts this year, the estate tax is scheduled to be repealed in
2010 for one year before snapping back to hit estates of $1 million or more in
2011;  an odd sequence dictated by the tax cuts passed under President George
W. Bush.


While nonbinding, the vote was a clear sign of Democratic division over the
tax, with Ms. Lincoln arguing that it was devastating to family businesses
that are a prime source of jobs in her state.


"In a time when our government has handed out billions upon billions to failed
Wall Street banks," she said, "it is time we provide a little relief to our
businesses on Main Street."


But critics say her estate tax proposal represents a giveaway to the rich
since very few estates built around small businesses or farms; always the
poster children for repealing the estate tax; would actually be subject to the
tax.


"The real beneficiaries are indeed the same kind of people getting the big
bonuses on Wall Street," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the
liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.


A new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that only 100
farms and small businesses in the entire country would be subject to the
estate tax under Mr. Obama’s plan, a number that shrinks to 40 under the
proposal Ms. Lincoln sponsored with Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican
in the Senate.


A subsequent analysis by the center raised the prospect that there may be no
farms or small businesses in Arkansas vulnerable to the tax.


A few opponents of repealing the tax have suggested that Ms. Lincoln, who is
up for re-election next year, is looking out for the heirs of prominent
Arkansas family businesses like Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods. She dismisses the
notion, saying such wealthy Arkansans have the personal resources to contend
with the estate tax on their own.


Ms Lincoln and her aides say she is instead acting on the concerns expressed
by the owners of Arkansas businesses like timber firms and floral shops who
worry that what they have worked to build and expand might have to be sold to
pay the tax.


And they may well believe that. Since discovering in the 1994 elections that
the "death tax" had real resonance as a political issue, Republicans have
pounded on the subject and won a steady escalation in the tax threshold,
though they have been unable to secure its repeal. They miss no opportunity to
continue the drumbeat.


"No one should have to visit the tax man and the undertaker on the
same day,"
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said during the
floor debate. "It is the government’s final outrage."


Republicans and other critics consider the estate tax to be fundamentally
unfair, saying it represents double taxation since those who accumulated the
assets had already paid taxes throughout their lifetime. And they say it
presents severe legal and financial headaches for surviving family members.


Advocates of retaining some level of an estate tax say it is simply a capital
gains tax on investments that never previously changed hands. They see it as a
legitimate effort to require some of the nation’s most affluent families to
share some of the rewards they have reaped.


But they acknowledge that Republicans have already triumphed on the public
relations front, turning the estate tax into a continuing hot-button issue for
many people who could only hope that their heirs might someday have to pay it.



BK>OTOH, the US debt load, the ratio of national debt to GDP, went
BK>from aprox 115% after WW2 to about 33% in


(snip!)


The subject was `taxing people beyond the grave.....and nothing whatever to do
with "national debt to GDP..."...or WW2.



"No one should have to visit the tax man and the undertaker on the
same day."
......Sen Mitch McConnell



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*Durango b301 #PE*