A simple solution would be to subtract what the billionaires save from whatever money SD gets in federal money. Fair is fair, right?
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Not so much. RV full-timers can claim residency there as well - which is a good thing, since most states will not consider an RV a home even if it is, and will deny voting rights on that basis alone. Those who donât take SD residency pretty much have to use somebody elseâs address,or have their rights forfeited.
I do NOT understand this argument! My stuff is my stuff. I can give it to whomever I wish, and I do not choose to give my stuff to the US government simply because theyâve decided they want it. I didnât get my stuff from them, so thereâs no justification for it being reverted to them if I die. In other states, you just put your stuff into a trust to avoid this problem -so why should SD take a any hits for allowing what other states allow anyway? If I inherit from my parents, then no - you donât get to just say itâs not âmyâ stuff. If they didnât spend or donate it, it stays within the family, as it should. I am not a tenant farmer or a vassel. To say otherwise is to claim the State should have zero regard for families. (Thatâs not a specific defense of wealthy families, but a defense of any and all families.)
I spent all that time back in the 70âs protesting the abuses the federal income tax system allows, and supported a level percentage forâŚwhat? So that I could see the place turn into a socialist state? A fascist state? What is it? Because, while you argue thereâs this thing called a âprogressiveâ ideology, I cannot see the difference between those two and this âprogressiveâ thing. Thereâs no generosity or humanitarian intent there. All I see is greed.
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This is a great thread.
Socialists: OMG we have to tax multi-million dollar inheritances to prevent excessive gap between wealthy families and Everyone Else.
Capitalists: OMG we have to get rid of the tax on multi-million dollar inheritances so that my Daddyâs money flows freely to me, as he and Jesus intended, the natural way.
I know what side Iâm on, Dad.
so mobile homes can be registered as property or are considered property in south dakota (which supports its government with property taxes). sounds a lot better to me as well than having my right to vote determined by my choice of home type.
where i get lost is avoidance of federal estate tax. 121 billion is a significant amount of money to the global economy. if no one has to pay federal estate tax, then why is this happening?
âlawyers have invented complicated strategies to squeeze bigger sums into the vehicles â as much as $39 million, according to a presentation by McDowellâs firm published last year.â
in addition to that:
"Another attraction, for customers in places like New York and Massachusetts, is the chance to shelter their investments from income taxes in their home states. "
now thereâs no payment of state income tax when the âcustomersâ still receive all the benefits of living in those states. if the wealthiest can manage to not provide their share of support to state or federal government, then why should i?
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Yes.
And your parentsâ stuff was your parentsâ stuff. And your childrensâ stuff will be your childrensâ stuff.
But; you are not your parents, and your children are not you. Your parentsâ stuff is not your stuff, and your stuff is not your childrensâ stuff.
Are we clear now?
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Since you canât seem to manage a single reply to me in this thread where you ask for clarification rather than making assumptions & jumping to spurious conclusions or resorting to personal insults, Iâll bow out and declare you the winner of the thread.
âI do NOT understand this argument! My stuff is my stuff. I can give it to whomever I wishâ
I think youâve hit the nail on the head. And if you follow that on, then taxes shouldnât exist at all since earning money and even buying stuff is just people giving money to people.
It takes a shift in perspective to realize government helps defines what a dollar is. Without government â or something exactly like government â would money have value? ( Bitcoin works, I think, because it still can be changed into cash. ) We have to pay for government (and for society!) somehow, and taxes are how we do it.
If you even vaguely like the country youâre living in, itâs part of keeping that country strong. Taxes are our responsibility as members.
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Your anecdotal stories have holes big enough to drive zeppelins through & you rely on your mannerisms to avoid being confronted on these. You made a declaration? Big deal.
BTW, your 80 year old friend whom you insist on claiming was made homeless by a property transfer resultant of sale or forfeiture of property due to âdeath taxesâ, which you infer made it possible to evict w/out regard to any tenant right he could have claimed otherwise? âvery hard to simply evict someone in Japan in almost all circumstance except this one.â Complete BS.
But you know that. You rely on the inference, but practically admitted that the person, if they existed at all, allowed themselves to be evicted/removed/disenfranchised w/out kicking up a fuss as a matter of personal choice, due to pride in privation or some-such when remedy was otherwise likely certain.
You want people to believe that a particular manner of property transfer in Japan negates contracts/tenants rights/due process & allows all manner of indignity & supports your contention that estate taxes harm the elderly because you say so nicely?
Not a chance. I call BS on you, your stories, your mannerism & intent, so get over it, because pretending to be nice is quite the opposite of being so. In this respect, I have more respect for you than you do for anyone here.
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Not at all - if they intend that their stuff should become my stuff, then it should. You do get that thereâs a reason why the laws in all states contain default assumptions as to division of property if a person dies intestate, right? What do you think those defaults are there for? They arenât new - they derive from Common Law. Because, by your reckoning, the State gets it. Or maybe, if the State doesnât jump on it, the whole neighborhood should just run in and grab what they want?
So, I know this guy. He has some stuff, and he wants to give me some of it. In fact, he wants to give me some of his stuff every two weeks.
Should the government take some of that stuff, or not?
If so, why? If not, why not?
In what ways is this situation different to some woman, whose vagina you just so happen to have squeezed through, (or some man who just so happened to insert his penis into that vagina you later squeezed through) wanting to give you stuff? In what ways is it the same?
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rofl. Obfuscate, much?
They arenât using the dead as a revenue source. They are using the transfer of stuff from one party to another as the trigger to impose a tax. If the stuff stayed under your mums name, they probably wouldnât be able to touch it. Of course ⌠in that case you wouldnât get any unearned stuff. Itâd just sit there, doing stuff all.
But even if the government were using the dead as a revenue source ⌠so what? Itâs not like the dead have much use for it any more, and they may as well give some of it back to the government who provided the opportunities and environment in which that stuff could be generated.
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No need to obfuscate, here. I was entirely direct. Sorry you donât dig it - but given your flag avatar and use of âmumsâ, the questions concerning taxing the dead and the existence of property divisions under existing law, nor the meaning of âprogressiveâ are relevant to you anyway. Maybe thatâs why you failed to answer any questions posed and resorted to obfuscation and diversion when you got stuck without any answers.
Anyway, doesnât matter. Iâm sure you are an excellent example of every advantage and opportunity your government has given you, so do whatever it is you do there.
My landlord complains about estate taxes, he also complains about âlazy poor people sucking off the government teatâ-- I can think of nothing lazier than inheriting a fortune. If parents really cared about their children they would leave them nothing and force them to build their own fortunes. You can leave all your money to charity if avoiding the tax is all you want to do.
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If our political system (all branches) wasnât so corrupt, it should be painfully obvious that differentiating tax rates based on how the income was earned is unconstitutional on its face (14th Amendment - âcorporations are people, too, my friendâ).
Then again, I do tend to run a bit more communitst than your average plutocrat-worshiping Randian.
BTW Estates are actually a really interesting anthropological/sociological issue. Its one of the few dozen universal laws/customs. Every human society deals with them somehow.
Of more interest is how it is dealt with. Our form of inheritance, where the dead personâs assets minus a cut of large estates for the state are passed on as they specify or by default to spouse, then children if spouse dead, then etc via blood relation, then eventually everything to the state as a fallback is far from the only way it is/has been done.
Some schemes that do/have existed for long periods of time (often much longer than our current scheme):
Primogeniture: assets of the deceased are given to the first born (often first born male, often over a spouse). I believe this was very common in farming societies where subdividing the estate would not work because the farms would become too small.
Seniority: the âseniorâ family member (eg next oldest sibling) inherits. I think that is basically what is going on in Downton Abbey.
Sharing out: assets of the deceased are shared across the community (often according to status or leader-whim). I believe this is fairly common in tight tribal societies.
Destruction: assets of the deceased are destroyed. I read about this one for a herding society. They would kill the herd of the deceased and have a big feast, but it would often be more food than could be eaten⌠still nearly the entire estate was killed (I think the children each got a breeding pair of whatever-beasts, which basically everyone would inherit). Once could also look at asset burial as a form of this.
Leaderâs decree: the leader decides who inherits. Very feudal.
Taxation: assets go to the state.
Of course these schemes can be mixed together. Most western nations are doing: as specified by the deceased, or to the spouse, then shared among children, then shared to other relatives, minus a cut for the state sometimes thus mixing legal contracts, bloodlines, and taxation.
There is nothing ânaturalâ about the Waltonâs favored inheritance scheme. Inheritance is always and everywhere a cultural and legal artifact. If, temporarily due to disaster or whatever, there is no culture or law there is always the system animals use: whoever can seize the assets gets them. Its one of the ways you know your society has collapsed.
Default rules exist, and these rules have their origin in common law. So what? Our entire legal system comes from the common law, but it is always being modified. Laws are made and laws are changed. It used to be the common law that only acknowledged male descendants would inherit property. Laws change. There is nothing particularly sacrosanct about the common law, and you probably wouldnât like living under the common law as it existed 500 years ago.
Point taken. I think what aggravated me was the presumption that SD was somehow doing something wrong in lawfully allowing people to escape taxation. Oh, the horror! difficult to tell whether people are just that enamored of the Stateâs greed, or just hate the wealthy that much - thus my question about what the heck a âprogressiveâ ideology actually is.
Over that long historical stretch you mention, some progress was being made toward limiting the Stateâs power - (Magna Carta, 4th Amendment, etc.). Much of that was directed toward recognizing and protecting private property from State greed. And the fact that those common law recipes have existed for a good long while does stand as testimony to that direction, as well as several human tendencies - fighting over inheritances, for example.
One place where the law changed when the US came into existence was this notion that a person convicted of certain crimes could have their property stripped by the state, and all inheritances wiped out, though the convictâs children had broken no law at all. That was a rather key premise, as many came into this country as a direct result of that kind of action - often over religious dispute, but nonetheless. Nobody wanted to see any more of that! So now, weâre seeing all this defence of the State stepping back in, albeit in a non-criminal situation. The state simply decides, well youâre dead, you arenât gong to complain, and We the People want some of your goodies, just because. Nevermind you did no crime, and nevermind weâre taking part of your childrenâs inheritance without even convicting you of anything at all. We just want your stuff, and if you had a patriotic bone in your dead body you wouldnât complain.
Iâm not worried at all about law changing. They do, and very often should. My concern is tied to the underlying principles those laws are supposed to uphold. I understand the dislike of the partisan politics that have been involved - I dislike it, as well, and whichever party is taking the blame on this one is of zero concern to me. But this one matter, if settled strictly on those principles this place espoused as essential to its existence, would have to say - you know, I dislike that rich s.o.b. and his sense of entitlement, and his paying zero taxes while the lower middle class gets hit for their grocery money - but heâs still got a point there. And this isnât the way to get him to pay his share.
You didnât lose anything. You gained 85% of your parentâs estate â how nice! Your parents, OTOH, lost 100% of their estate.
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The exact same thing could be said of income tax, consumption taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, gift taxes, etc., etc. In all instances it is the state taking money without wrongdoing.
On the other hand, one could argue that the state has provided the laws and infrastructure that you relied on while building your fortune, and when that fortune changes hands (through sale, gift, or death) they will tax it. There is nothing arbitrary or unprincipled about this. Thereâs also the step up in basis you enjoy when you inherit property (e.g., Just say your parent bought property for $10,000âtheir âbasisâ in the propertyâand itâs worth $1,000,000 at the time they die. If your parents sold their factory just before they died, they would have to pay taxes on the $990,000 in appreciation. But if you sell the house just after inheriting it, you pay $0 in taxes on the sale because of the step up in basis from $10,000 to $1,000,000 at the time of their death). Is it logical or principled to expect the government to lose this tax revenue just because someone dies? [quote=âAliceWeir, post:103, topic:17881â]
I think what aggravated me was the presumption that SD was somehow doing something wrong in lawfully allowing people to escape taxation.
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The problem is that SD is creating structures that make it possible to avoid federal taxes, which is very different than SD eliminating its own taxes.
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There is a third option which your idiosyncratic ideology appears to have blinded you to:
Running a country costs money. Lots of money. Taxation is how the government gets the money it needs to run the country it leads and to provide all the services you consume. I canât think of a better group to tax than those who have absolutely no further need for any of their money, can you? And, even then, 15% is an exceptionally modest tax burden.
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