*** Warning! Warning! Danger Will Robinson! Tax lingo ahead! ***
I was reading my tax updates today and came across this:(subscription site)
Other groups, however, like the National Taxpayer Union, are pushing for a vote sooner rather than later. Earlier today they circulated a memo to their members asking them to contact their respective senators and “demand” they support full repeal of the estate tax. They listed numerous reasons why such action should be taken.
“It discourages saving and asset accumulation and encourages wasteful spending,” the group wrote. “It wastes the talent of able people, both those engaged in enforcing the tax and the even greater number engaged in devising arrangements to escape the tax. The death tax is unfair and immoral, but due to Senate inaction, it remains in effect. We need taxpayers to speak out now and to tell their senators that it is high time to kill the death tax once and for all! Please speak out today!”(Emphasis added)
Now, I happen to oppose the estate tax (despite the fact that it is a revenue generator for me), but I really don't understand where people are coming from when they state that the tax, not as it stands now, but in general, is immoral. I readily concede that current rates which hover around 50% for federal taxes alone could be immoral. (As they amount to state sanctioned theft.) However, I fail to see how the tax, as a concept, is any more immoral than any other tax.
Does anyone have any ideas?
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