re: #753 Aceofwhat?

is an argument why your ASSERTION that the estate tax was akin to other taxes is not necessarily true. I then asserted that i find the notion repulsive. Please be more careful with ASSERTING that i have not made an argument.

It is akin to the other taxes. That you find it repulsive doesn’t make it different, it makes your reaction to it different. I could find taxes on gifts to best friends repulsive— it doesn’t mean that the taxes are really functionally different.

I’m sorry, but I really don’t find an argument from personal revulsion to be anything but assertion. I’m sorry it angers you, but it’s my honest opinon.

You are asserting that the estate tax is “fair because it’s taxing unearned income, or a gift, or whatever you want to call it”. (I want to call it whatever the dictionary calls it, by the way. Let’s stick with that.)

Which dictionary? Which definition in the dictionary?

Fair enough. I am asserting that the estate tax is unfair because once i have paid my fair share of taxes on my income, i wish to be able to give whatever portion i desire to a family member without losing another percentage to the state.

I know that you want that. I’m asking why it’s fair to let you to, whereas if I, once I have paid my fair share of taxes on my income, want to purchase something, I have to pay taxes on that purchase.

If i have $10MM and i wish to give $5MM to my daughter, i will actually give her $5MM plus the amount to be taxed so that she ends up with $5MM. My ARGUMENT is that you are taxing the donor, not the recipient.

Well, in the case of estates, that’s perfectly true— the estate is taxed, not the recipient. However, it’s still taxing the transfer, not just taxing because someone died. The taxes are only on the money that’s being transferred.

The recipient is not taxed. The ESTATE is taxed. You know the one that the ESTATE OWNER already paid taxes on.

Yeah, but it’s a lot more logically true to say that the transaction is being taxed, not the estate. The common sense of what’s occurring is that the inheritors are receiving money and assets that they did not have before, and that that transaction is taxed.

I am asking, again, why that transaction should be privileged above the transaction of me working hard to earn that amount of money.

I’m sorry that I upset you. I’m not trying to do anything other than explain my position, and I think you’re really not getting where I’m coming from if you’re focusing on whether or not it’s the estate or the inheritor being taxed.

By the way, gift tax actually functions the same way as inheritance tax, so when you give your daughter five million, you can give her five million and pay the gift taxes on it yourself.

Make up your mind. You can’t argue that gifts should be taxed but that the estate should be taxed.

I’m not getting that statement at all. Why not?