Good Article about ongoing Social Security Funding on Market Watch

[anethum]

What you are documenting here is what has become a consensus view over the last 50 years or so that death should not be a taxable event for most people.

<snip>

Utterly false. There is no consensus view concerning the estate tax, as this discussion demonstrates. The recent massive increases in the US estate tax exclusion happened when one political party held all of the levers of political power.

Death is not a taxable event. Estates may be taxed if their value is above the current absurdly high exclusion, but corpses are not taxed.

 

[Fermion]

Notice how some 80% of millionaires are self made. But it doesn't stop there. Many of the most wealthy Americans, yes, billionaires like Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffet, Musk, Cuban and many many others built wealth through ideas and risk taking, not inheritance.

Note that Gates got funding from his mother and came from a wealthy family (father was a partner in big law firm). Zuckerberg went to an expensive boarding school (60k/yr) then Harvard, and also got funding from parents to start Facebook. Not exactly self made in the sense of someone like Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4 (and first private spacewalk) who came from a poor family and actually gave his unemployed father a job.

 

[pb4uski]

If stepped up basis was eliminated the inherited business would continue operating as it currently does. It would only impact the new owners if and when the sell the business.

 

[pb4uski]

Not relevant to the question but there is more wealth concentration in the United States than in most other developed countries.

 

[Montecfo]

Utterly false. There is no consensus view concerning the estate tax, as this discussion demonstrates. The recent massive increases in the US estate tax exclusion happened when one political party held all of the levers of political power.

Death is not a taxable event. Estates may be taxed if their value is above the current absurdly high exclusion, but corpses are not taxed.

Well I would never suggest that a few posts on a message board overcomes decades of evidence put forward by our duly elected representatives, but you certainly may. Really have to wonder how such misguided folks they keep getting into power, and why more enlightened actors fail to "fix" this affront when they are in power.

But in any event I acknowledge that differering views may be strongly held, and hopefully you see that wealth is dynamic in the US and opportunity abounds probably more than anywhere.

And if you do not, it is not for lack of evidence.

 

[Montecfo]

Note that Gates got funding from his mother and came from a wealthy family (father was a partner in big law firm). Zuckerberg went to an expensive boarding school (60k/yr) then Harvard, and also got funding from parents to start Facebook. Not exactly self made in the sense of someone like Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4 (and first private spacewalk) who came from a poor family and actually gave his unemployed father a job.

I'm sure these can be nitpicked. But overwhelmingly parents who send their kid to a nice college or fund their first business did not raise a billionaire.

This is not like the Mars family or the Vanderbilt's.

But in some ways you can "score" people with regard to how self-made they are. Forbes does this in its Forbes 400. And certainly people who overcame disadvantages are even more remarkable.

But my point is made regardless as wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a few who retain it for generations and who are sowing the seeds of revolution, which is the argument I was countering. Instead wealth and income levels are dynamic in the US. You have provided a fine example.

And according to studies billionaires overwhelmingly are self made. Anywhere from 67-80%.

That's a lot of upward mobility.

 

[pb4uski]

....decades of evidence put forward by our duly elected representatives...

 

[Koolau]

Utterly false. There is no consensus view concerning the estate tax, as this discussion demonstrates. The recent massive increases in the US estate tax exclusion happened when one political party held all of the levers of political power.

Death is not a taxable event. Estates may be taxed if their value is above the current absurdly high exclusion, but corpses are not taxed.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Now my advice for those who die (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes (taxman)
'Cause I'm the taxman
Yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me (taxman)

George Harrison

 

[ncbill]

It isn't taxed for simplicity's sake.

The federal tax system here in the USA has always been geared towards tracking/taxing income.

 

[USGrant1962]

It isn't taxed for simplicity's sake.

The federal tax system here in the USA has always been geared towards tracking/taxing income.

Not always - the 16th Amendment was in 1913 when the country was already 137 years old.

 

[pb4uski]

...The federal tax system here in the USA has always been geared towards tracking/taxing income.

Seems to me what he wrote was correct.