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To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (14273)	6/6/2002 12:33:08 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

Would my estate be allowed to escape inheritance tax? Yes.....if you donated all of it to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. <g>

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (14273)	6/6/2002 12:39:51 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

This discussion has little grounding in reality. The estate tax, as with most taxes, in fact depends upon a transaction to take effect. The transaction is the conveyance of the estate to the heirs. The rationale has nothing to do with "deferred taxes". It has to do with anxieties about concentrations of property in a democracy, and the desire to put a brake on wealth by inheritance. Two principles vie with one another: the idea that one can dispose of one's property as one pleases, even by testament; and the idea that unearned wealth (by the heir) is more vulnerable to confiscation than earned wealth would be. These have their correlates in political economy: the idea that capitalism, and therefore economic development, demands substantial ownership rights, against the idea that democracy cannot tolerate excessive concentration of wealth(whatever "excessive" is taken to mean). The horror of concentrations of property is not as great as it might have been, considering that we are no longer an agrarian society, and most wealth is invested; and considering the size of the population, so that even the top 5% of the wealthy translates into millions of people..........

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (14273)	6/6/2002 12:56:50 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Suppose I accumulated $1B 10 years before my death. And then I had no further transactions. Not even bank interest- -I kept the currency in a guarded vault in the basement. Suppose you initiated your closing transaction before you died but it wasn't completed until after you died and accumulated $100B. Would you be liable for the taxes as capital or short term gains because you initiated the closing transaction before you died or would it kick over to estate taxes because it wasn't completed until after you died. And if your dead, why would you care? I know that was too subtle, but you don't establish tax code based on one individual fabricated case. You look at the general issue and set tax code based on that. jttmab