Re: Wealth and the Art of Avoiding Taxes

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> >   Morally wrong how? Does not the child have more of a claim to the
> > inhertiance than the government? Why should money that has already been
> > taxed be taxed again for doing absolutely nothing at all?
>
> Does either have much of a claim, frankly?

  Yes, because that's where the existing property owner (the parent) wants it 
to go, generally (if not, they'll give it away to a foundation or church or 
something). 

  Let's imagine you decide to give the government all inheritances so it can 
create the "Great Society Strikes Back" program. What you'd end up seeing is 
that parents would buy $20,000 decks of cards and nik-naks from their 
children to insure the money still went where they wanted it to, only it 
would be much more of a hassle.

  As I noted right now, the government's insanely bad (apologies to Steve 
Jobs) death tax is bad enought it has, in essence, created a lawyer tax. In 
other words, since people aren't content to see a large portion of their hard 
earned estate go to Uncle Sam, they instead have to create trusts by paying 
substantial amounts of money to lawyers. 

  Think about the over used, but very true example of the family farm. With 
the current estate tax (death tax), a good portion of that farm will be owed 
to the government on the event of death. If the family doesn't have enough 
liquid assets to pay the government, they must sell the farm when their 
parents buy the farm (rather ironically). 

  This is the case that many people that aren't rich, just comfortably middle 
class face too. Someone with a $900,000 farm could face the better part of 
half the value of the said farm to be taxed. Ouch! 

  This just isn't fair. The property doesn't belong to the government, nor is 
death some criminal event that should be punished. It's not fair that the 
beloved farm, small business, homes, etc., that a loved one owned and wanted 
their family to enjoy after their death is just lost not because someone made 
a lot of new cash or anything like that, but because THEY DIED!

  Perhaps the saying the "only things you can count on are death and taxes" 
should be changed to the "only thing you can count on is taxes on death."

  -Tim

- -- 
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Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
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