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Originally Posted by KevinG  Corporations don't pay taxes. |
KevinG, you're wrong about this. Also, taxation isn't about "punishing" people or certain types of behavior. It's about raising revenue, and the only way to raise money is to tax people who have it.
We're spending hundreds of billions in Iraq, and we're running massive budget deficits and creating unbelievable debt for future generations. You might think it's "fair" to make lower income people pay the same as the wealthy, but your theoretical position is useless if they don't have the money to pay.
Anyway, I feel this topic has gotten a little offtrack with all the discussion of income taxes. My real question was about the estate tax. The federal estate tax was originally enacted in the early 1900's to prevent a concentration of wealth and power that could threaten democracy.
According to the New York Times, about 1 in 325 US families has a net worth of more than $10 million. As a practical matter, the federal estate tax is largely inapplicable to families with less than about $10 million or so (because of exemptions and certain planning techniques used by tax and estate planning lawyers).
There's a point at which accumulation of wealth is no longer about taking care of your family or buying nice things--it's about power. Also, families that have accumulated billions have benefited greatly from the stability and infrastructure of modern government. I think that extreme disparities in wealth fuel distrust, radicalism, and instability. In my view, the estate tax, properly applied, is a useful check on the establishment of a permanent aristocratic ruling class and a pressure valve that promotes long-term political and economic stability.