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To: JC Jaros who wrote (33628)	7/17/2000 5:43:47 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Are you saying if I vote for Nader I'll get to romp? Where is that on the Web site?

To: JC Jaros who wrote (33628)	7/17/2000 6:54:01 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Since we're nice and OT: I never thought I'd say it, but in this case I have to agree with the conservative stylings of JDN. Even though I respect Nader, I think the inheritance tax needs to be eliminated or substantially reduced. These are the reasons: a) In fact, the percentages are weighted toward the "low end"--if you can call a millionaire low end--with over 50% of the tax coming from estates with less than $5m and around 25% coming from estates with under $2.5M(Source: IBD dated today.) The big guys do indeed seem to have ways to attenuate the bite. b) For any cash or cash-equivalents or bonds, it really is double taxation. I don't want my kids to have to give over half of everything to the government because the government has already taken over half to reduce it to what it is today. True, as the WSJ points out, equities and real-estate escape the death tax through the stepped-up basis that the heirs get. But for the rest it's double taxed and there's no other way to portray it. c) In 1978 there was an out-of-date confiscatory real-estate tax in effect in California. There was a real-estate boom, and suddenly older couples who had bought modest homes decades before were losing them to pay property taxes. Lawmakers simply ignored that times had changed and property values were exploding. They did everything except what they obviously had to do: drastically reduce (not eliminate) the property tax. Result: the idiotic California legislature got their head handed to them, many lost their seats, and the public passed an emotional and truly terrible tax reform measure, Prop 13, that crippled county services statewide for years. The whole thing was completely unnecessary if legislators had just done their job. The estate tax is similar. The $625k shelter line is obviously way too low for today, and the $1M line it's going up to by 2006 is also too low. Houses again play a key role: they enjoy a stepped up basis so you don't have to pay taxes on them, but they still count as part of the estate. Once again, the child of a couple who has lived in their home for 30 or 40 years can see the most or all of $625k taken up by a relatively modest home in California. The official percentages of people affected are certainly bogus for California and probably for many other states. Also, the FIRST time somebody loses a small family business to pay estate taxes, is one time too many and legislators should lose their jobs. I would like to see this unfair tax eliminated, but at the very minimum the line needs to be redrawn at $5M. It needs to be redrawn, and then kept, at the point where you can't possibly wonder about the financial well-being of somebody with that much in assets regardless of how much they paid in taxes. $1.25m used to be near that point, but it isn't any more. <G> --QS