Next Tuesday is D-Day. The Senate will vote on doing what the
House has long since done: end the death tax, the most obscene tax
in America. And we may — just may — have the votes to win.
Since its enactment in 1916, the death tax has actually cost
more jobs and destroyed more small businesses and family farms than
it’s raised in government revenue. That’s no accident. death tax
proponents never meant their handiwork to raise real money; the
levy was, from its very beginning, intended as a means of income
redistribution, “of taking from the rich to give to the poor.” It
was pure socialism from day one, a key plank of both the Socialist
and Communist Party platforms, and utterly anti-family at its
core.
But the joke was on the suckers who believed the left’s
“fairness” drivel. Even if it were okay to steal from the rich,
even if it were more virtuous somehow to take their life’s
painstaking work and give it to the government instead of their
children and grandchildren, it was never the rich who suffered.
Rich folks, you see, can afford the armies of accountants and
tax lawyers needed to avoid the tax. They can hide their money in
trusts, in foundations, in offshore accounts, all both legal and
reasonable. They aren’t fools; and unlike the rest of us, they have
the means to avoid getting mugged.
Not so for the little guy, though, the families just beginning
to get ahead. And it’s that rising class, threatening their
“betters,” that the tax has always stalked.
According to a December 1998 U.S. Congress Joint Economic
Committee Report, the death tax is indeed a leading culprit in
family farm and business failure. In one survey, nearly one-third
of black business owners say their heirs will have to sell their
business just to pay the death tax, while over 80% say they lack
the assets to pay. The alleged party of “civil rights” is in the
business of snuffing their dreams.
In 1995 alone, 89% of all taxable estates had $2.5 million or
less — easily accumulated just in a couple’s IRAs and 401(k)s
without ever constituting “wealth” — and 54% of all death taxes
paid came from net taxable estates of $5 million or less. That’s
the very Mom-and-Pop corner grocery, or the third generation family
farm, that wealthy Democrats pretend to care about when trial
lawyer John Edwards talks about “two Americas.” He fails to mention
that he’s the one keeping the poorer, frequently blacker America
“in its place.”
Even Russia knows better. In June, Russia abolished its death
tax. The land of the proletarian revolution itself, where any and
all accumulation of wealth was abolished 80 years ago in a hail of
bullets and blood, has finally left the totalitarian twentieth
century behind. Acting on President Vladimir Putin’s April
proposal, the State Duma voted 414-2 not only to end the
confiscatory taxation of inheritances, but also the tax on gifts to
close relatives, something else more “enlightened” Americans have
not quite managed to do.
It’s not for lack of trying. Four months ago, the U.S. House of
Representatives voted 272-162 to put the death tax to rest once and
for all. As well they should have: over 89% of Americans agree that
it’s unfair to tax incomes and then tax that same money
posthumously; and 96% of manufacturing firms feel the death tax
threatens their long-term growth.
It’s time for the Senate to follow the House’s lead: Americans
well deserve what Steve Forbes and Larry Kudlow call “No Taxation
Without Respiration.”
So do yourself and your country a favor: call your Senator, and
tell him you mean business, that you’ll accept no compromises, that
the death tax really must go.
Better yet, call one of the fence-sitters who can’t quite make
up their minds: they hold the balance of power (and there’s a list
of them — and their phone numbers — online at VanguardPAC.org). Tell
them about Russia. Tell them about the additional 175,000 jobs per
year that repealing the death tax will create, and the countless
thousands of small businesses, family farms, and yes, local jobs
which will be destroyed if they “compromise” or fail to act.
Tell them you’re watching. Tell them you’re mad. But whatever
you do, don’t take this vote for granted. It still has to be won.
And the outcome is very much in our hands.
