[Newspoetry] Estate and Imagination Taxes

[Donald L Emerick]

House G.O.P. Votes to Permanently Repeal Estate Tax
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS --- Filed at 5:25 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Estate-Tax-Repeal.html?todaysheadlines

1.  "Only in our government are you given a certificate at birth, a license at marriage and a bill at death,'' said Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas.   "It's tax, tax, tax -- it's the Grim Reaper every day."

2.  The tax only hits a tiny fraction of all estates in any event; in 1999, IRS statistics show that just over 49,000 estates paid $119 billion in taxes.  {That's an average of $2,428,571 per taxable estate.}

3.  This is about pure greed,'' said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J.

4.  The Estate Tax is more unfair than sales or excise taxes, because everyone has to pay those, according to their desire to consume, but only those with large estates have to pay "estate" taxes.  Why should the rich be able to establish themselves as a relatively permanent autocracy, passing on untaxed millions from generation to generation, living off only the interest (investment income), accumulating ever larger estates, to be passed on down the family line?

5.  I have never yet heard rich guys complain about sales and excise taxes -- or government fees for auto licenses and a thousand other little things.  But, they say that estate taxes are unfair because it is "double" taxation.  Well, if it's double taxation, let's see them repeal all sales and excise taxes first -- because that benefits the many.

6.  If it's double taxation, let's open the books up and show that the contents of the estate were in fact taxed at least once!  The plain fact of the matter is quite otherwise.  The contents of taxable estates almost never were taxed, even once, as income.  Rather, such estates contain unrealized capital gains that have never become income, under our weird tax rule that book gains are not realized until the underlying capital items are sold.  I'd say that, if we are to ditch the estate tax, then justice in taxation would require that we tax as present income the annual change in book value of wealth holdings, for everyone, with a minimal "deduction" (or, to foster equality in our society, "credit").

7.  Another unfairly taxed component of large estates tends to be business deductions for buying the capital items in the first place, so that the rich get excused from paying any taxes on some of their present income when they use that income to buy "business" capital assets.  Why should the family farmer on the family businessperson be able to pass on the entirety of a profitable "going" business concern to a child, or to children?  If the business were treated as a buyout, being strangers, we would see nothing unusual in requiring that then realized gains be then taxed as present income.

8.  Besides that, the tax laws are full of a thousand other ways to avoid paying any taxes on estate items.  In a real sense, the money that is taxable in an estate is just the tip of the iceberg of the total wealth of a rich person -- most of the other money has been sequestered before death in other places -- and this is just the necessary residual of current wealth that is needed for personal "cash flow".

9.  What do dead people do with all their money -- or why should they even care about establishing a permanently well endowed family line?  The most obvious answer is that those who will take over (and sometimes "share" in) the estate have a vested interest in getting everything that someone else has, free of all transfer taxes.

10.  Well, although a NewsPoetry Editor has said that nothing is poetic about taxes, I find there to be a poetic potential in such things.  But, irony, satire are not the right ideas -- maybe someday someone will invent the kind of poetic form that taxes the imagination of people, inversely (of course), to its wealth or poverty -- for the poor have only to imagine food and shelter and clothing and so many things, that they must be rich in imagination -- but the wealthy have nothing of personal desire to imagine, only.  Then, following the Republican principle that those who are richest in something should pay the smallest taxes, while the poorest in that dimension should pay nothing, and even be subsidized by the taxes paid by others, why it follows that the wealthy will have to pay truly large imagination taxes!

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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