re: #748 Obdicut

I’m sorry, but I feel that your definite of ‘private’ isn’t working for me. Wills are not private instruments. They are public to prevent anyone being cheated out of what they were left in the will. A person can make a will and leave nothing to his children. Even if you feel that the transaction of money inside a family ‘should’ be protected from the government, you’re just asserting that, not actually constructing an argument for it. The basis of estate tax is that the income is unearned and a gift. Your argument is that the government should butt out of family affairs— though still, of course, adjudicate the will fairly and impartially. I do not find that is even an argument.

And you can do much better than declare yourself ‘winning’.

And a deed is not a private instrument…if i feel that my neighbor has intrude upon my property, i will call upon the government to adjudicate it. That does not give the government the right to enter my door.

The basis of the estate tax is that we have voted in such a way that it is so. I am saying that I believe there should be no limits on private gifts within a limited family circle. There should be a moral or ethical reason why the government can take my family’s possessions, not a moral reason why the government should NOT take my family’s possessions.

The argument, which i will restate, is:
1. A family gift is a very private affair, wholly unlike a “transaction” such as a purchase, an investment, a hire, a utility bill, or a job. I find it far more repulsive to have the state intrude on the former.
2. The government is not required for the proper adjudication of a well-planned estate. Even if they were, that does not in itself identify the subject matter as more or less fit for taxation than any other subject.
3. A family gift is only “income” in the IRS definition of the term. Elsewhere in the land of clear thinking, gifts and income mean two different things.
4. No ethical reason should be required to state that a tax is unfair. Rather, a tax needs to state an ethical reason why it is fair.