Free Republic

FIRST ON FOX: Republican lawmakers are mounting a massive effort to repeal the federal inheritance tax, colloquially known as the "death tax." Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, is leading more than 170 House Republicans on the "Death Tax Repeal Act," which is also backed by the House’s top tax writer, Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo. An inheritance or estate tax is levied upon the beneficiary who receives assets upon a person's death. Republicans have long criticized the estate tax as a needless financial burden on grieving families, particularly hitting small family-owned businesses. It comes as Republicans work on extending...

A breakthrough in one of the most intriguing, historic who-dunnit cases by Professor Tim Thornton, discovered buried deep in a Register of Wills held at The National Archives.It's Summer 1483, and one of the most infamous and shocking crimes in English history is about to take place. Two young princes are brought to the Tower of London under the protection of their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. A few weeks later they vanish without a trace. The mystery of what happened to the Princes in the Tower has obsessed us for centuries. Why did these boys, aged just nine and...

Family dynamics can be a sensitive and thorny topic to navigate, especially when it comes to divvying up an inheritance. According to a New York Life Wealth Watch survey, a phenomenon known as the “great wealth transfer” is well underway. It’s projected that 15% of American adults are expected to receive a sizeable inheritance in the next decade from a parent, spouse, or another individual. Inheritances can be a fantastic financial windfall that can certainly help build generational wealth. However, it doesn’t always come without complications — especially if you already have a complex family situation. Rochelle, 36, from Houston,...

A Pizza Hut worker allegedly killed his manager in the restaurant’s kitchen this month over a $7,000 inheritance check the victim cashed earlier in the week, according to Wisconsin authorities. Kavonn Ingram was charged with the Feb. 5 homicide of 55-year-old Alex Stengel, whose body was later tossed in a dumpster outside Pizza Hut in early February, police said. South Milwaukee police received a call of a dead body at the garbage area, from where officers followed a trail of blood to the kitchen, a criminal complaint states, according to reports. The 31-year-old was charged with first degree homicide.

The total value of an inheritance is not just a dollar figure; what’s actually in an estate can matter significantly. Trillions of dollars will transfer from one generation to the next in the decades ahead, but not everyone will see their inheritance as a help; for some, it may actually be a headache.The fact is, some assets are better than others to leave behind. Others can cause arguments between family members, or may have hidden costs. Sometimes, let’s face it, your kids just don’t want your stuff.You can prevent issues from happening though with thoughtful estate planning. “A lot of...

Guy Fieri revealed what it will take for his sons to inherit his multi-million dollar fortune. “Shaq said it best,” the “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” star told Fox News on Wednesday. “Shaq said, ‘If you want this cheese, you got to get two degrees.’” “Well, my two degrees mean, you know, postgraduate.” Fieri shares Hunter, 27, and Ryder, 17, with his wife, Lori, 52. He also helped raise his sister Morgan’s 22-year-old son, Jules, following her 2011 death. He warned the three to expect him “to die” broke unless they follow his conditions. “I told my boys, ‘None of this...

An Alabama woman is being kicked out of her longtime home as investors are looking to buy the 40-acre plot from her family, which could be worth upwards of $20 million. Corine Woodson, 84, has been living in the same house on the outskirts of Auburn for over 60 years and is forced to leave the residence because the house sits on land with shared ownership throughout her family. “I would like to ask them why. You know, why, but I don’t. I can’t figure it out. Thinking about it, wondering about it. It’s not easy. I can tell you...

A father of three recently revealed to his eldest daughter that he and their mother planned to retire early and spend all their money during retirement—now she and her sister are furious. Here’s what the dad had to say. The man and his wife are in their mid-40s, both successful in their respective careers and earning an annual combined income of approximately $300,000. “We’ve both worked hard to get where we are in our careers and thankfully, that means we’re able to provide a good life for our kids. We aren’t rich, and we don’t live beyond our means,” the...

Rebecca Miller said her father was on Medicaid for about two years and she served as his caretaker at his home after he was diagnosed in 2018 with Parkinson's disease, from which he died last August. About 30 days later while still mourning David Miller's passing, the 36-year-old said she received a letter from the Ohio Attorney General's Office stating her father owed $56,000 to Medicaid Estate Recovery. The Medicaid collection program was foreign to the Clinton County woman, as it is to the vast majority of people, attorneys said. The state notice was a jolt, informing Miller that her...

The idea of a kid suing their parents might seem kind of crazy and depending on which culture you come from, pretty darn ungrateful. After all, they were the people who brought you into this world and presumably fed you, clothed you, housed you, and raised you. Of course, it could also be argued that if your kid grows up to want to sue you, it's probably a result of one of three things: you either did a crumby job raising them, they got influenced by some type of external groups of people/ideologies that turned them into scumbags, or, you...

A Vermont man was indicted Tuesday on charges that he let his mom drown in order to get his hands on his $7 million inheritance. Nathan Carman, 28, is facing eight counts in the 2016 murder of Linda Carman in Rhode Island in a bid for the titanic payoff.

Under the Biden administration’s tax proposal, an appreciated real estate asset owned at death could result in income taxes due that exceed the net proceeds from sale of the asset after paying existing debt. Yes, having an asset where the fair market value of the asset is greater than the debt could result in taxes at death that exceed the net value of the real estate. Currently, an individual must have net assets in excess of $11.7 million to be subject to zero estate taxes. The proposed Biden capital gains tax at death proposal would subject individuals with net assets...

Biden wishes to double tax inheritances. This will spell the end of small family fortunes.

Jean Kennedy Smith, a former diplomat and the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday in New York, her daughter, Kym Smith, told CNN. She was 92. "It is the end of an era," Kym Smith said of her mother's passing. "She lived a great life" and was vibrant up until her death, her daughter told CNN. Smith was the youngest daughter of Rose and Joseph Kennedy, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 20, 1928. She was the eighth child out of nine in a family that was such a major force in American politics and society...

In America, if you play by the rules, working to earn a living and saving to provide for the future, taxes take a piece of your earnings. If you win a state lottery, you owe tax. But if you get lucky in the lottery of life and land an inheritance, you owe no federal tax. That isn’t fair, is it? Extending the federal tax code to include inheritances would end that inequity. Inheritance taxes — regulated differently in the states that have them — are a levy paid by a person who inherits money or property of a person who...

His businessman father is worth an estimated $853 million — but Damian Hurley’s grandfather is trying to stop him from getting a cent. The biological grandfather of Elizabeth Hurley’s only son is waging a nasty legal battle to stop the teen from inheriting any of the family fortune. The Austin Powers actress gave birth to her only child, Damian Charles Hurley, in 2002 after a brief fling with US businessman Steve Bing. Mr Bing has an estimated net worth of $US600 million ($AU853 million), with the bulk of his fortune coming from his grandfather, New York real estate baron Leo...

I’ve joined a new aristocracy now, even if we still call ourselves meritocratic winners. If you are a typical reader of The Atlantic, you may well be a member too. (And if you’re not a member, my hope is that you will find the story of this new class even more interesting—if also more alarming.) To be sure, there is a lot to admire about my new group, which I’ll call—for reasons you’ll soon see—the 9.9 percent. We’ve dropped the old dress codes, put our faith in facts, and are (somewhat) more varied in skin tone and ethnicity. People like...

Should young people in the United Kingdom be given £10,000 ($13,500) when they turn 25? A top think tank says yes. The proposal from the Resolution Foundation is one of a number of suggestions for reducing inequality between the young and old. British Millennials and their peers in other developed countries have fallen behind older generations when it comes to wealth, income and home ownership, a trend that politicians have been slow to address in the wake of the global financial crisis. "We need not just some tinkering, but some big and dramatic solutions," said Matt Whittaker, deputy director at...

Remember that song by Tom Jones; "I who have nothing!". That pretty much describes me. I'm near 62 y/o, working part time. I hope to keep working at least for the next eight to ten years, then start taking my Social Security. I have no savings to speak of. I will always owe the IRS something from unpaid student loans or wrongly filed tax statements. Most times I don't receive any return at all, it's simply 'absorbed' and paid out to the Govt. The one bright spot is that due to a sibling's death last year, I have received about...

The alleged gunman in the Valentine's Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida wants to give any inheritance due him from his late mother's estate to the victims' families or an organization that will help the community heal, his attorneys said Wednesday. Nikolas Cruz, 19, appeared at a hearing in Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale to determine whether he is truly indigent or if he stands to collect up to $800,000 from his late mother's estate and various other financial accounts in his name. It was previously determined that Cruz could not afford his own...