The Estate Tax
Death to the phony spin
philly.com
The Republican-controlled Senate will attempt this week a feat that is breathtakingly irresponsible - abolishing the tax on multimillion-dollar estates.
Conservatives have done a masterful spin job in vilifying the estate tax. They've effectively renamed this progressive, needed source of revenue the "death tax."
It sounds so unfair to tax death. And a tax on death sounds as if it might snare everybody.
In truth, the estate tax is paid by only five of every 1,000 people who die.
Let's repeat that, so it can sink in and dislodge the misconceptions that a decade of false "death tax" rhetoric has planted in Americans' brains:
The estate tax is paid by only five of every 1,000 people who die.
This year, only estates of more than $2 million (or $4 million per couple) will owe the tax - about 12,600 estates total.
What's more, under current law, that exemption level already is set to rise to $3 million for an individual and $7.5 million for a couple by 2009. When that happens, this tax will be paid by only three out of 1,000 estates.
Next time you're sitting in a traffic jam on the Schuylkill Expressway or Route 42 in South Jersey, look ahead of you. Look left. Look right. Chances are, even without a repeal, no one you see will have this tax levied on his estate after he dies.
Oh, but what about the sacred "family farm"? This is another falsehood promoted during the annual fights in Congress to provide another boon to the Paris Hiltons of the world: The estate tax is causing the extinction of the family farm.
Actually, the estate tax rarely hits family farms. |
