Public Citizen has generated a report (pdf) showing that 18 of America’s super wealthy families are primarily responsible for a lobbying effort to repeal America’s estate tax or “death tax” as Republican PR gurus and their devotees like to call it.
According to the press release by Public Citizen:
[The report] reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.
The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo wine, Campbell’s soup, and Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms. Collectively, the list includes the first- and third-largest privately held companies in the United States, the richest family in Alabama and the world’s largest retailer.
These families have sought to keep their activities anonymous by using associations to represent them and by forming a massive coalition of business and trade associations dedicated to pushing for estate tax repeal.
. . .
In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups. But just more than 0.25% of all estates will owe any estate taxes in 2006. And the American Farm Bureau, a member of the anti-estate tax coalition, was unable when asked by The New York Times to cite a single example of a family being forced to sell its farm because of estate tax liability.
. . .
While they extol the hard work of individual farmers and small businesses, most of the 18 families have been wealthy for generations; only five still include the people who first earned the family fortune. Members of the families are far less likely than most Americans to have paid taxes on their wealth; to a large extent, that wealth lies in assets that have appreciated but, unlike paychecks, have never been taxed.
I have written about the estate tax in the past. Nobody likes paying taxes, and every tax contains elements that are unfair or particularly undesirable. But, I have never had anyone adequately provide a justification for eliminating the estate tax before eliminating the income tax. Whatever moral claim an heir has on the state of his father at the end of his life, it pales in comparison to the claim a worker has to his paycheck at the end of the week. So, whatever problems the estate tax has, there is little or no reason to address them while we still tax the paychecks of working people. Furthermore, extreme concentrations of wealth have pernicious effects on our democracy. I don’t have any serious problems with allowing individuals to amass ridiculous amounts of wealth based on their own luck and skill. But I don’t see any particular public good served by extreme levels of wealth in the hands of the children and grandchildren of those people. How many generations since John D. Rockefeller made his first billion? And we still have his progeny directly affecting our lives through their various prominent roles in our government. Skilled as those individuals may be, I would hazard a guess that they would not have attained their positions absence a pile of inherited wealth.
Call it what it is:
The Paris Hilton Allowance Tax
Doug,
Check out the documentry Orwell roles in his crave. There is a nice brief bit where Congressman Bernie Sanders VT. talks about the angry average joes who routinely stop him on the street to complain about the Death Tax.
Also check out the documentary Walmart the high cost of low prices by Robert Greenwald. No corporation has more ruthlessly exploited public infastructure be it roads, highways, sewers and ports, not to mention public aid for the poor in lieu of paying living wages and benefits to its workers. No corporation has made great fools of local and county politicians as they destroy their own communities inorder to attract Walmart through tax breaks to their towns at the even greater expense of their neighbors. Yet Walmart the corporation and the family pays relatively little in taxes. With the repeal of the Estate Tax the Walmart family will serve as a regressive political dynasty through out the rest of this century and into the next corrupting the politics of this country along with all those who provide the sweatshops where its cheap goods are produced.
You mentioned the Rockefellers. There is a major difference between the wealthy families of the early twentieth century whose patriarchs in later life and children felt a need to give back to society and those of today. The Walmart family in contrast is notoriously stingy. They spend tens of millions on private art collections that are hidden from the mutual enjoyment of the public. Instead of genuine public service, they secretly spend hundreds of millions successfully swaying public opinion inorder to perserve their wealth and power.
Sadly this is an appropriate post given the news that the economist John Kenneth Galbraith died yesterday. Galbraith is the man who is famous for stating that the United States is a nation dedicated to Private Affluence and Public Squalor.
With all apologies to Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of RICH, HIGHLY MOTIVATED citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Family farms are sold before the farmer dies, so that they don’t have to be sold at distress prices to pay death taxes. That’s why there’s no example to point to. What, you think that the rise of corporate agribusiness and the demise of the family farm is a myth?
Check out the IRS private letter rulings on IRC 2032A special use valuation of farms for examples of farm families struggling to meet these death tax requirements–they are real.
I don’t want to let billionaires off the hook, but I do think the exemption should be $5 million or $10 million. And tax rates like 40% just encourage paying big fees to lawyers to beat the tax.