“What they need to do is lift of the burden of the estate tax from family businesses.”
I agree with you, which is why I advocate a deductible of $10 million or more. And I can’t see any rationale for making the estate tax bracket higher than the maximum income tax bracket.
But the bottom line is the government needs revenue from somewhere. Eliminating the estate tax completely clearly implies raising other taxes.
I posted the following on another thread on the “War Tax”. Talking about how dems want a larger slice of the pie, while Republicans want a larger pie. More tax revenue doesn’t mean more taxes:
A google search came up with President Bush’s speech in New Hampshire regarding the 2007 budget. A great speech with good economic news spoken in simple terms so I can understand it! It’s on the Whitehouse website. A short excerpt:
“One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it’s helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent. That’s kind of counter-intuitive, isn’t it? At least it is for some in Washington.
You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase. See, some people are going to say, well, you cut taxes, you’re going to have less revenue. No, that’s not what happened. What happened was we cut taxes and in 2004, revenues increased 5.5 percent.
And last year those revenues increased 14.5 percent, or $274 billion. And the reason why is cutting taxes caused the economy to grow, and as the economy grows there is more revenue generated in the private sector, which yields more tax revenues.”
But the bottom line is the government needs revenue from somewhere. Eliminating the estate tax completely clearly implies raising other taxes.
Yep. However, I’m not as optimistic as you on the subject. I’ve come to believe that taxes are going to have to be raised, it’s just a matter of how much.
A) The middleclass is getting to the point where it’s pretty much tapped and raising taxes in any significant way could push a significant number of people over the edge.
B) Folks forget what Buffett’s specialty is, which is estimating the value of a thing. And he’s darned good at it. So, if he says the gubmint needs to raise taxes, then I’ll find the alternative of not raising taxes a little scary.