FEDERAL ESTATE TAX ARTICLES ARE FRAUDULENT
The two articles that you posted recently about the federal estate taxes are so deliberately inaccurate as to border on fraud. Particularly abusive is the article by Mr. Arends.
Like the other recent article, it fails to take note of, or even to look at three critically important aspects of the federal estate tax.
First, compared to other federal taxes, the estate tax never did raise much money for the U.S. Government. In fact, the number of billions of dollars that both recent articles claim that the federal government is losing because of lower estate taxes is LESS than one State (California) has wasted in the past year through EDD incompetence, a legal dispute over pension plans, and a budget excess.
Secondly, the federal estate tax never was intended to raise a lot of money for the government. Rather, it was intended to level the economic playing field and prevent the establishment of a wealthy aristocracy in America from seizing control of most of the wealth in America, so that there would always be upward economic mobility in this Country. But in fact, the end result that was created by the federal estate tax was exactly the opposite of its intended purpose.
Members of America's Middle Class were prevented from moving up economically when their estates were wiped out by the federal estate tax, while the extremely wealthy in America paid NOTHING.
One example: J. Paul Getty. When he died, back in the "good old days" of the federal estate tax, he was worth about 1.4 Billion dollars. So, if he would have paid a federal estate tax at the rate that middle class Americans had to pay it, he would have paid about $700,000,000.00 in federal estate taxes. But how much did he have to actually pay? NOTHING.
So, the Getty economic aristocracy continued to grow, while middle class Americans were DENIED upward economic mobility by the very estate tax that was supposed to guarantee them upward economic mobility.
If Yahoo doesn't put at least a little bit more balance into its editorials, or at least permit public comment upon this deceitful garbage, then I, for one, am going to change my news outlet.
Robert L Litchfield
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