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Repealing the Estate Tax? Buffett says “Dead Wrong!”

Gateswealth
In Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, William H. Gates (dad of Bill Gates) and Chuck Collins argue that large fortunes should be taxed, both because of the societal benefit of wealth redistribution, and because it’s appropriate payback to the society that provided the mechanisms for wealth.

Wealthy philanthropist Warren Buffett has been in the news the last couple of days arguing for the estate tax on just those grounds.

Buffett, the second-richest man in America after Bill Gates, according
to Forbes magazine, said recent tax law changes have tended to benefit
people like him.

"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality
of opportunity has been on the decline," Buffett said. "A progressive
and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy
toward plutocracy." (Reuters)

Dirk McQuigley at DailyKos picked up on the story, highlighting the tendency of Estate Tax-repeal supporters to refer to the tax as a "Death Tax," and praising what is, in his opinion, a more accurate term: "The Paris Hilton Tax."

Paying taxes IS an obligation of citizens. IMO it is an integral patriotic duty as money paid to the treasury helps pay for our military, homeland security, coast guard, etc. Wing nuts who feel the income tax is unconstitutional ignore that our constitution was ammended to include an income tax.(Link)

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2 responses to “Repealing the Estate Tax? Buffett says “Dead Wrong!””

  1. Joel Monka Avatar
    Joel Monka

    You do realize that Mr. Buffet makes a profit off the death tax, don’t you? That he makes money from setting up trusts and shelters, and many of the businesses he owns were sold to pay inheritence tax. Not to mention the small detail that as all of his holdings are in trusts or other tax exempt vehicles, he wouldn’t pay any more tax no matter what the rate was.

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  2. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    I’m not a tax lawyer, but I doubt that estate tax avoidance is the chief motive for investors to choose Buffett-run funds, and I’m pretty sure that William H. Gates doesn’t get his money by running tax shelters of any sort. Nor does his son. It may be true, as this conservative polemic from 2004 suggests, that Buffett would lose money if the estate tax vanished, just as he would lose money if other tax code incentives for the purchase of certain financial instruments fanished, but it’s just not plausible that the relative income gains Buffett gets from the existence of the estate tax are his chief motive for speaking out in its favor. Certainly those gains are not the reason Andrew Carnegie supported inheritance taxes. He was pretty outspoken about it too.
    Here are some more hardheaded, unabashedly pro-capitalist explanations of why someone who wants to see free markets grow and competition prosper should really support an estate tax– probably an estate tax with more teeth and more scope than the one we have now.
    Calling the estate tax a “death tax” is absurd– it’s a good example of <a href=”http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml>misleading reframing. If you die and leave your stuff to your spouse, you never have to pay estate tax– there’s an exemption for that– andthe overwhelming majority of people (98%) who leave money to their children or their cousins don’t have to pay estate tax, either. According to the IRS, which ought to know, it applies only to people who die with estates worth more than $2,000,000, and sometimes not even then (for example, in many cases, if the property is a working farm).
    And finally, Warren Buffett’s last name has two t’s.

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