Washington, D.C.—Thanks to President Clinton’s veto, the unfair
estate tax, or “death tax,” lives on to take a bite out of the earnings of
hard-working farmers and small business owners.
Both the Senate and the House voted to end this unfair double taxation,
and I voted to repeal the tax on two separate occasions this year.
But the President stopped this tax relief dead in its tracks with his veto
Aug. 31.
The death tax repeal would have repealed the estate, gift and
generation skipping transfer tax over 10 years. Currently, the tax is
levied after the estate owner’s death, and is taken from the deceased
owner’s estate.
The ridiculous concept of being taxed because you die would probably be
funny, if it weren’t true. But this onerous tax is all too real, causing
up to one-third of business owners affected to liquidate their firms to
pay for this tax, eliminating jobs and destroying family farms and
businesses.
What makes this tax so unfair is that it amounts to double taxation of
earnings. The income is taxed when it is earned, and then taxed again when
it is passed on to the next generation.
Even worse, taxpayers have to pay for this tax even before they die in
the form of thousands of dollars in fees to estate planners, in an effort
to reduce the tax’s burden on their heirs after their death. So not only
do they get a bite from the I.R.S. after their death, their estate also is
slowly drained by financial planners during their lifetime.
And what about those that are to receive the estates of their loved
ones? They are the ones that lose out the most from this tax. The estate
tax can take up to 55 percent of the estate away from the potential heirs,
a group that is usually in the lower or middle income brackets. This isn’t
a tax on the rich, it’s a burden on the survivors of family businesses and
farms.
Until this tax is repealed, it will continue to damage local economies
by threatening family-owned business. I won’t be satisfied until
this grossly unfair burden on farmers and small business owners is
six-feet-under. |