Death and Taxes - And the Death Tax

Every time I hear someone like Warren Buffet espousing the importance of higher taxes on people like him, I am left dumbfounded. He is a supporter of higher death taxes. Of course, given the way he has his money structured, he would never pay it. However, Brian Reardon recently wrote an excellent article in the National Review regarding this subject. This isn't a rich guy topic alone:

The congressional debate over the death tax has been hijacked by the super-rich and those who are obsessed with the super-rich. That’s too bad. The ramblings of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. — extremely wealthy men who stand against the permanent repeal of this burdensome tax — are a distraction from the real issues in the debate.

Reardon succintly puts the entire debate into simple terms everyone understands:

To its very core, the death tax is bad public policy. You don’t know when you’ll pay the tax. You don’t know how much the tax will be. And you don’t know if your estate will have the liquidity necessary to pay it when it comes due.

Read the entire article here.

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