W ^Jortlanò (Observer
Page 6
August 6, 2014
New Prices
Effective
May 1,2010
Martin
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A small distance/travel charge
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Making the World Safe for Trust Fund Babies
Reinforce the
inheritance tax,
don’t scrap it
by
C huck C ollins
Real w ages have
stagnated for decades.
Homeownership rates
are down. College debt
is w eighing down
young people entering
the workforce. Millions of low-
wage workers eke by on a mini
mum wage of $7.25 an hour.
As the American Dream slips
away for millions of people in this
country, one faction of Congress
is doing its best to aid a select
group of folks that least needs a
helping hand: trust fund babies.
More than 222 House members
— nearly all of them Republicans
— have co-sponsored legislation
to abolish America’s inheritance
tax, a levy that only applies to the
estates of multi-millionaires and
billionaires.
Technically called the estate
tax, and derided by its opponents
as the “death tax,” this part of the
tax code affects only one out of
every 500 Americans.
If Congress abolishes it, the
already wealthy will gain the privi
lege of passing unlimited inherit
ances to their children once they
die. Scrapping it would rip a $210
billion hole in the federal budget
over the next decade, according
to the Tax Policy Center.
The lawm akers deter-
mined to kill the inheritance
tax go out of their way to
hide the facts and pose as
| populists.
Take Rep. Kevin Brady, a
Texas Republican and lead
sponsor of repeal legislation. He
circulates advertisements with two
young farm kids next to a pickup
truck with the caption, “The Death
Tax crushes family farms, ranches
and businesses.”
And a Kentucky PAC spent
$1.8 million airing a TV ad featur
ing a farmer who bemoans the
burden of the inheritance tax and
praises Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (The farmer,
John Mahan of Lexington, did not
complain about the $405,692 in
federal farm subsidies he received
between 1995 and 2012). The in
heritance tax “continues to be the
number one reason family-owned
farm s and businesses a re n ’t
passed down to the next genera
tio n ,” B rady recen tly (and
wrongly) claimed.
It’s hard to fathom how a tax
J|
that 99.8 percent of households
don’t pay could be a bigger threat
to farmers than volatile farm prices
and competition from corporate
agribusiness. But don’t bank on
opponents of the inheritance tax
letting the facts muddle their po
litical agenda.
As a strong supporter of the
inheritance tax, I’ve seen this
playbook before. Between 1996
and 2004, America’s plutocrats,
including the Walton and Mars
families, invested millions in a
propaganda campaign designed
to save themselves billions.
They plastered the media with
images of farm families, alleging
that the inheritance tax would be
the “death of the family farm.”
The only problem was, when
pressed by Pulitzer Prize winning
reporter David Cay Johnston, foes
of the estate tax couldn’t produce
a single example of an actual farm
lost because of the inheritance
tax. It was a complete myth.
Congress wound up weaken
ing the tax in 2001, when oppo
nents failed to abolish it. Now this
tired debate is back, with those
phony farm images and fake popu
lism.
Here’s what really matters:
Couples with less than $10.6 mil
lion in wealth are exempt from the
inheritance tax. So are individuals
with wealth under $5.3 million.
The inheritance tax is impor
tant because the very richest
Americans already benefit from
enormous loopholes that enable
them to pay taxes at rates lower
than average workers. The inher
itance tax levels the playing field.
And the huge family fortunes
now being passed onto the next
generation are creating a new
wave of American aristocrats.
Who are the real faces of the
inheritance tax? Try the sons and
daughters of the billionaires who
make the Forbes 400 list, standing
next to their family limousines.
There is a real problem with the
inheritance tax: Billionaires are
paying expensive lawyers to wea
sel out of paying it. Casino mogul
Sheldon Adelson, for example,
used a system of trusts to funnel
$8 billion in wealth to his heirs.
This maneuver let his family dodge
about $2.8 billion in estate taxes
that would be due after his death.
Instead of abolishing the inherit
ance tax, lawmakers should focus
on closing the loopholes that em
power the richest Americans to le
gally dodge it.
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar
at the Institute fo r Policy Studies
and co-editor o f inequality.org.