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There is a big difference between income and assets. We don't tax assets. If we did, you would be paying taxes on the value of your home every year. That gets taxed as capital gains only when you sell it. We long ago decided that widows (and widowers) did not have to sell their homes when their spouses died. So why should they have to sell the farm or business? The only time assets are taxed is at death.

And should the children be forced from their home just because a parent died? It's the same thing to say they should lose the family business and their source of income.

I don't know if your numbers are right or not. But would you think the numbers mattered if the law affected only you? Fair is fair, no matter how many people are affected.

I agree that we shouldn't be blind to party politics. But the "soak the rich" mantra is the most poisonous of all.

My favorite example of how this death tax is wrong has to do with the Wash. Redskins. Jack Kent Cook couldn't leave the team to his son, John, even though John had run the team for years. He thought he had managed to leave John enough money to buy the team. Alas, that didn't work. Now the team is owned by bratty danny. And it hasn't been the same since. If the tax laws had allowed John to keep the team, a lot of us would have been happier.
And the amount of money the Feds got from that disaster probably financed maybe 2 minutes of the gov't.

We do tax income, but if you want to tax assets, be consistent. And tax assets every year.

And should the children be forced from their home just because a parent died? It's the same thing to say they should lose the family business and their source of income.

I don't think they "should." But before I react to the idea, I'd like more information. I'd like to know if that actually happens, why it happens, what can be done to prevent it, etc. What I am reading says there are exemptions and loopholes available for people to keep the family business.

I don't know if your numbers are right or not. But would you think the numbers mattered if the law affected only you? Fair is fair, no matter how many people are affected.

I have a pretty cold view of taxation. In my opinion, we get screwed when the money is allocated. That's where the unfairness occurs. Everyone goes for a piece of the action, then it's a scramble to see how gets stuck paying for it. I am not going to volunteer to pay any more than I have to, and it follows that if I favor a repeal of a tax I don't pay, that somewhere someone else is going to have to make up the difference. Now, if the GOP proposed a repeal of the estate tax, with a conservative estimate of the revenue lost--lets use the 750 billion or whatever number is out there--and within the same legislation proposed a federal cigarette tax estimated to offset that revenue loss, I would call my Senator tomorrow in support, because I don't smoke, and as a person on the sidelines, a cigarette tax is more fair than an estate tax, because one doesn't HAVE to smoke.

gree that we shouldn't be blind to party politics. But the "soak the rich" mantra is the most poisonous of all.

I am no saying soak the rich. I am saying don't soak me.

We long ago decided that widows (and widowers) did not have to sell their homes when their spouses died. So why should they have to sell the farm or business? The only time assets are taxed is at death.

According to my reading, they don't:

Marital Deduction
The marital deduction exempts from transfer taxes all transfers between spouses, whether during life or at death, regardless of the value of the asset being transferred. For example, if husband wishes to re-title the family house into his wife’s name, the transfer of the value of the house will not be a taxable event because the transfer was to his spouse. Similarly, if husband designates wife as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy, wife will receive the death benefit without paying estate taxes on it because the proceeds came from the husband.

From jaybrinker.com