Death and Death Taxes
November 14th, 2007 by Peter SudermanIt’s infuriating that the death tax is still on the books. No one need deal with forking over huge sums to the government after a family member passes, and, as NAM’s ShopFloor blog reminds us today, it’s a policy with the potential for devastating economic ripple effects. Here’s a note from a business owner that NAM blogger Carter Wood published this morning:
 …when a business like ours is sold off or shuttered, the loss to the economy is great. If Sukup closed today, 350 people would lose their jobs. But, that’s just the beginning. Without jobs, there’s no reason for a child care center. As people move on to other places, the restaurants and stores close down, the dentist moves to a bigger city with more customers. The loss would be felt in Iowa, in Arkansas, in South Dakota.
Now, to be clear, we’re a growing company. So, why would we close down or sell off? I’m here today to tell you that one of the greatest threats to our family-owned business is the estate tax. If my wife Mary and I died today, we estimate that our estate tax liability would be somewhere between $15 and $20 million dollars. The only way for my sons to pay that tax would be to sell off the business.
Liberals like to portray this as a simple matter of giving the rich what they supposedly deserve, but, as with all taxes, it effects entire economic communities. the Left seems to think that punitive tax measures exist in some sort of cordoned-off economic clean room, closed off from affecting anything around it. But trying to manage the economy — through taxes, regulations, bureaucracies — always has unintended consequences. The idea that the government can make clean, narrow slices with their policy is just a myth.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
It is sdo sad that the Left in this country does what is good for their Political Power and not what is truly best for our country and the people they are supposedly pulling for. Very sad.
Russia may have broken apart and the lie of communism revealed for all to see. However the ideology of Marx is still with us in this country and Europe as well. Not the European countries however that were insid ethe Iron Curtain. Poland et al.
The lefts’ hatred of capitalism because of its imperfections fails in all cases to come up with a better system except to hope for some unspecified nirvana.
To be productive at least the anti-capitalist cult in America could put forward recommendations to improve our imperfect system. However all we hear isnegativity and nothing substatial in its place.
I am unhappy that small businesses that produce 75% of all new jobs in this country are part of the target that the left has focused on to take from the rich for their own political enrichmjent. Sad.