The death tax

[Giant Saguaro]

I think they should be abolished. I think the estate and/or death tax is really a ridiculous tax - it's the principle behind it. The government should not tax my children/grandchildren on what I want to leave behind to those who I want to leave it to.

It will not make anyone 'work harder.' As Carl points out, wealthier people will find enough ways around them and it really won't hurt them that badly to begin with, so it just ends up sticking it to the smaller guy, the person with the farm or the middle class person. An outrageous tax, really.

[Giant Saguaro]

I think they should be abolished. I think the estate and/or death tax is really a ridiculous tax - it's the principle behind it. The government should not tax my children/grandchildren on what I want to leave behind to those who I want to leave it to.

It will not make anyone 'work harder.' As Carl points out, wealthier people will find enough ways around them and it really won't hurt them that badly to begin with, so it just ends up sticking it to the smaller guy, the person with the farm or the middle class person. An outrageous tax, really.

I think the estate tax is one of the best ways to keep a Democracy from becoming feudalism like Czarist Russia.

That's an interesting take on it. To me, low property taxes (and lower cost of housing) keep that from happening. The property tax situation is mostly like a response to feudalism - the more you own and where you own it, the more you pay. Like in PA - your property taxes are pretty awful high (like in a lot of states) and when you couple that with rising costs more and more people are being priced out of the market with each passing day, really.

I was talking to someone a while back who is an engineer around Philly and she works in an office somewhere around there and she told me what her property taxes were just for a house and a small piece of ground and then how when they (she and her husband) sold it and bought a piece of property along the coast in Delaware they quickly saw that their property taxes were a fraction of what they were around Philly. I was a little surprised.

[Giant Saguaro]

It will not make anyone 'work harder.' As Carl points out, wealthier people will find enough ways around them and it really won't hurt them that badly to begin with, so it just ends up sticking it to the smaller guy, the person with the farm or the middle class person. An outrageous tax, really.

It doesn't effect the smaller guy, farmers, or the middle class. This is a flat-out lie that is widely heard around the internet.

You have to be a multi-millionaire for the estate tax to effect you.

You can avoid estate tax by setting up trusts, donating property to children/relatives/charities, etc. Only those who are truly filthy-wealthy aren't currently able to avoid the estate tax.

Yes and No. I know some folks back around March or April who were in the process of dividing up an estate, normal middle type people, and they were getting, as they put it, "rammed." I also think it probably depends upon the state. Now I think where you're right is about the ways around them, but of course, one has to know about that stuff in order to do it. A lot of people got an education regarding this in reference to my friend's situation. So that's great - I say get around it any way you can because it's an absurd tax.

[Giant Saguaro]

Yes and No. I know some folks back around March or April who were in the process of dividing up an estate, normal middle type people, and they were getting, as they put it, "rammed."

The estate tax doesn't affect middle class people. Perhaps they were referring to something different. You have to have at least $1.5  million in net worth (assets - liabilities) to trigger the estate tax. And it goes up to $3.5 million by 2009.

I also think it probably depends upon the state.

The estate tax is a federal statute. 

Now I think where you're right is about the ways around them, but of course, one has to know about that stuff in order to do it.

They just have to hire a halfway-decent lawyer. There are many thousands of lawyers that deal with the estate tax and also many tax accountants. You can shield much of your net worth from the estate tax with good planning.

Which makes it really kind of useless then, doesn't it (if one can get out of it so easily)?

So then this must have been a different tax - it was not a federal tax, so it was a state estate tax then. Because I know for a fact they called it an estate tax.

[Giant Saguaro]

Which makes it really kind of useless then, doesn't it (if one can get out of it so easily)?

It's not THAT easy. If you have net worth of $5 million+ you probably wont' be able to get out of it.

So then this must have been a different tax - it was not a federal tax, so it was a state estate tax then. Because I know for a fact they called it an estate tax.

You might want to check on that. What state are you in?

Woops! Scoonie - I'm off, I'm wrong, cancel that. I just asked someone who is here and it turns out these people have more money than I thought - part owners of a resort, so yeah, as they put it, they got clobbered. "Rammed" was the word I heard used - lol. So it was federal and I would say they were worth probably - oh, several million anyway. And by several I'm thinking 3 or maybe up. I know these people were doing some serious b*tching, they didn't like it.

The folks with the farm were a different situation. They were in Pennsylvania and were claiming to have been hit with it too. Now I'm assuming they were more middle.

I go back and forth between Arizona and Pennsylvania as I have family/places in both. My family is split largely between the two states - but more in PA. Now the situation in AZ, I'm reading, is such that they will be doing away with the state tax as soon as the federal one is gone. It's either that or they are just doing away with the state one regardless of what they do with the federal one. PA I need to research.

Either way, it's a tax I don't like, I'm very uncomfortable about the government taxing one's estate after death. Of course I don't like property taxes either, so that's just me.