the death tax

I could write forever on taxes, but for now there's this.

Apparently the efforts over the past decade to repeal the estate tax have been orchestrated by 18 of the country's wealthiest families. A major part of the President's tax cuts, estate taxes are being gradually phased out, with higher minimum thresholds every year until 2011. At that point the cuts expire, reverting back to a lowly $1 million threshold -- only a person's first million dollars will be tax exempt. This was necessary to "balance" future budgets; the idea was that they could count the money expected to be brought in by the tax to offset future deficits while at the same time fully expecting Congress to act before 2011 to make the cut permanent. A brilliant job of passing the buck.

According to the report, the families have spend $490 million dollars lobbying in the past 8 years, and stand to save $72 billion if the tax is repealed permanently (or if they all die in 2010). Much of the money goes to persuading the public that the tax primarily hurts small business and farm owners, when in fact fewer than the richest one half of one percent of people are subject to the estate tax each year.

On a slightly related note, if you are interested in knowing where your Congressional Representative gets money from, you can do so here.