It Doesn’t Benefit The Rich, It Hurts Minorities
2007 Tax Day Press Conference
Washington, DC — Having started to work right here in the National Press Club more than 40 years ago, I’ve finally discovered a tax cut liberals and conservatives can rally around. What does TV star Oprah Winfrey and President Bush have in common? They both detest the death tax, Miss Winfrey having famously said on her TV show prior to starting her own foundation she found it “irritating to say the least” that after paying half her income in taxes while alive, Uncle Sam was waiting for as much as 55% of her after-tax assets upon her death. And President Bush has time and again promised to sign death tax repeal legislation, so here’s an issue liberals and conservatives are able to rally around.
As the person who has preached the name DEATH TAX for estate tax, I want it known that in a city where con jobs are finessed on a daily basis, perhaps the biggest con job of all is the one that repealing the death tax is a tax cut for the rich. Hogwash. Absolute and utter nonsense, especially when the con artists try to put a face on the rich by invoking the name of Paris Hilton, that death tax repeal is a tax break for poor Paris.
Sorry. Can’t let them get away with that outrageous falsehood. Ever heard of the Hilton Foundation? Paris’ parents and grandparents have avoided the death tax for generations by founding their Foundation. So too the Gates Foundation, Buffett Foundation, Turner, Heinz, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Scaife, Winfrey and countless other foundations.
It’s time to dismount from the “tax cut for the rich” horse because that nag is dead — or it’s certainly on its last bag of oats!
There’s a chain of minority owned newspapers — from California to New York — that have fought for survival because of this confiscatory tax. Most famous is the Chicago Defender. Another, the Cleveland Call in Ohio, saved by boxing promoter Don King, who said the paper is part of his heritage.
Whether called the Death Tax, Grim Reaper’s Tax, Exit or Departure Tax, Feet First Tax, Tombstone Tax, or The Stiffest Tax of All — I’ve got a casket full of these gruesome names — it’s pretty ridiculous that on the death of a loved one, the first claimant in line is not a blood relative but good old Uncle Sam, with greedy outstretched palm.
To quote USC Prof. Edward McCaffery who describes himself as an “unrequited liberal” and who initially favored keeping the death tax but now endorses repeal, he said rather eloquently, “To most people, death seems like the wrong time to tax.”
For 15 years, the 60 Plus Association has lived by the slogan ‘Dying is not a taxable event.’
In that time, we’ve moved repeal from one goal line to the other. While three votes short in the Senate, over in the House we have an overwhelming 110 vote majority with 40-some Democrats and more importantly, eight members of the CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus, that voted for repeal because they know this tax hurts minority businesses the most. They have not bought into the con job that repeal is a tax cut for the rich.
To the argument that the tax revenues are needed, I have a question for the naysayer’s: Why is it that more than a dozen countries around the world have abolished their estate tax? What do politicians in those countries know that politicians in America don’t know?
The answer is simple; economic studies prove that instead of a loss in tax revenues, abolishing the death tax means businesses grow, leading to expansion of the tax base.
It’s time these politicians grew up, learned their simple Econ 101 lesson and helped us kill this unfair tax. Ostensibly killed three times in the past, perhaps it’s time like Mr. Dracula, we drive a wooden stake through its heart.
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