It was a sad day last Thursday for the states of Washington and Montana, as all four Democratic senators representing these two states sided with Republicans to lower the estate tax. Senators Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, Max Baucus and Jon Tester all jointed with Republicans in voting to extend current estate tax levels into the foreseeable future. Its a wee bit confusing, as there is a “deficit-neutral” provision that would actually increase the estate tax exemption to $10 million. Let’s just say that Congress is looking at the re-emergence of the old estate tax at 2001 levels with trepidation.
The estate tax is a deceitful issue, but one very demonstrative of how politics is done in the United States. It affects only the top 2/10th’s of one percent (.002) of all taxpayers. These would be our wealthiest families and their heirs – the Walton’s, Harriman’s, Kennedy’s and Bush’s. Yet when politicians talk about it publicly, they frame it in terms of dirt farmers and cattle ranchers, who are mostly unaffected. Further, conservatives ran the tax through the public relations industry, and were instructed never to use the expression “estate tax”, but rather the “death tax”, giving it an ominous aura.
The vote on Thursday will be a costly one – a tax cut of $245 billion for our wealthiest, bringing the total cost of estate tax cuts since Bush took office to over $700 billion. This at a time when so many working and middle class people are suffering. Baucus and Tester have screwed up priorities, it seems.
Why an estate tax? It goes back to the Progressive Era. During the late 19th century, for the first time in our history and coinciding with the Industrial Revolution, the U.S. saw its ranks of extremely wealthy families grow – the Rockefellers, Mellons, DuPonts and others left a bad taste on the public palate. Based on our experience in Great Britain, a country still run by its wealthiest families through the House of Lords, our forebears thought it wise to break up large estates. Nothing good comes from large concentrations of wealth save undue power and influence, bought politicians and privileged citizens enjoying special influence over public officials – the opposite of democracy.
In other words, untaxed estates lead to rule by the Walton heirs – oligarchy, or plutocracy, to be precise. We have legislators bending over (backwards) for the sake of the top 1%.
In Montana in 2006, 92 estates paid estate taxes – about 1.1% of all estates that year. But these are the wealthiest people in the state, and Senators Baucus and Tester seem very aware of them. One of the wealthiest families in the state is the Rehberg family. Congressman Rehberg ought to recuse himself from estate tax votes, as he is voting dollars into his own pocket. Rehberg has been one of the most vocal opponents of estate taxation – I suspect this has to do with his father’s estate having to pay the tax, and Denny’s inheritance being decreased. Hell hath no fury like a jilted trust baby. (Read here how Rehberg in 2005, true to form, speaks of the Estate Tax as affecting “families who have their whole lives invested in the farm or their small business”, rather than affecting him personally. It’s blatant – he’s shameless.)
But he’s got Senators Baucus and Tester fighting for him. So it’s a moot point.
Piece of Mindful 
I’m curious Mark, when someone of amassed wealth walks into your office and says, I’d like you to formulate a plan to avoid estate taxes, do you kick their butts out the door?
Is ripping into Jon, Max, and Den, guilt therapy for all the times you’ve cheated Uncle Sam?
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No one ever darkens my door who wants to pay more taxes. You’re a moving target, but please talk about Denny’s “families who have their whole lives invested in the farm or their small business” (who don’t pay estate tax), when we both know he is really talking about himself and using them as beards.
Talk about it, Please?
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Sounds like your customers and Denny have a lot in common.
Honestly Mark, isn’t their ways for the Rehbergs, Baucuses and Testers to pass their estates on to heirs even with the old rules in place?
Let me answer since you move around. Yes. So if you lower estate tax thresholds all you’re capturing is stupid people’s money.
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First, it’s a republic, not a democracy.
Second, it’s a capitalist economy, not socialist.
Third, the most successful capitalists are the most qualified to run the country.
PS: Your dirtbag “Estate Tax” didn’t come out of the Progressive Era. It came out of the Communist Manifesto (1848).
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LT – that’s idiotic.
Swede – talk about it please? Talk about Denny’s blatant hypocrisy? talk about it please? Please?
One of the great accomplishments of the Republican Party, 1980 forward, has been to get ordinary people to believe their interests are aligned with the super-wealthy.
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Ok, I don’t know for a fact but I believe properties that Denny’s Dad had have already been passed on, under older accounting rules with lower thresholds.
Now you can argue he’s fighting for his kids, but couldn’t you say that for Max and Jon and every other politician that votes?
I find it amazing that you guys always throw Denny’s wealth figures around and then bitch about his inheritance. Which is it Mark?
I know, its estates taxes when it serves your argument, its wealth when you’re spewing class envy.
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Sorry, smartboy, you’re the idiot. Do your homework before you blow your big mouth off.
The communists promoted estate taxes and anti-inheritance laws as transitory devices on the way to communist rule. Once all private property was outlawed, there would be no need for estate taxes and anti-inheritance laws, since no citizen would have anything to pass on to his heirs.
Karl Marx explained it this way in an 1869 pamphlet:
In treating of the laws of inheritance, we necessarily suppose that private property in the means of production continues to exist. If it did no longer exist among the living, it could not be transferred from them, and by them, after their death. All measures, in regard to the right of inheritance, can therefore only relate to a state of social transition, where, on the one hand, the present economical base of society is not yet transformed, but where, on the other hand, the working masses have gathered strength enough to enforce transitory measures calculated to bring about an ultimate radical change of society.
Considered from this standpoint, changes of the laws of inheritance form only part of a great many other transitory measures tending to the same end [the establishment of communism].
These transitory measures, as to inheritance, can only be:
a. Extension of the inheritance duties [taxes] already existing in many states, and the application of the funds hence derived to purposes of social emancipation.
b. Limitation of the testamentary right of inheritance, which — as distinguished from the intestate or family right of inheritance — appears as arbitrary and superstitious exaggeration even of the principles of private property themselves.
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Swede: Stay focused – I was making two points: 1) when people who have to pay estate tax want to get rid of it, they pretend that they are saving people who don’t have to pay it from paying it. That’s what Denny is doing. He is one of the few people in this state who has to pay it, and he pretends he’s doing it for everyone else. The little guys. Despicable.
2) Estate taxation has a worthy purpose in that large concentrations of wealth are anti-democratic.
At no point did I say that I was envious of wealth. That’s a knee-jerk reaction, and you might want to read what I wrote about regular people shilling for wealth.
I do have a problem with trust babies, as I used to work for them. Never a more useless appendage as a trust baby.
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LT – wrong century.
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Caught you in another one of your clueless posts, didn’t I? You had no idea where estate taxes and anti-inheritance laws came from, did you? You thought that was a “Progressive Era” idea. What a dolt.
Oh wait. You’re what they call a dupe. In this case, a communist dupe. Hee hee.
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LT – check what I said, dufus. I said “It goes back to the Progressive Era.” I was talking about the U.S. Estate tax. In fact, the exact year is 1916.
Rook/Checker is back, still an asshole.
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Your last response, last sentence to me was very telling. So I’m going to float this theory.
MarkT is a budding accountant in Billings. Representing people in the energy sectors he stays neutral about his political leanings. One day he lets out some of his left of center thoughts, which results in losses in clientele. Dejected he moves to Bozeman to start over, vowing to get even with ones who did him wrong.
Trusters, oilmen, anyone smart enough to accumulate wealth are the demons in Mark’s nightmares.
What a sad, sorry, existence.
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When I remarried in 2001, I had a choice between Billings, where I had clients, and Bozeman, where I had none. I chose Bozeman, and have not regretted it. I’ve always lived on a modest income, and though I was hurt by my political views, I regret nothing.
When I worked for the trust babies, I was conservative and Republican. Even as such, I can attest to you that these people don’t know how to accumulate wealth. Their only talent is to inherit it. They are classic Bush-like – born on third base, thinking they hit a triple.
One night there was a meeting of oil people and Gloria Flora, the head of the Lewis and Clark Forest (the greed in the room was palpable). Working as I did for a natural gas company, I still stood up and promoted roadless lands and wilderness. I’ll never forget Mac Clark fuming, spewing … “he spoke against us!”
Swede – you ever acted on conscience? Even when it’s scary? Even when it might cost you?
Didn’t think so.
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