Confidential to Spanky
 

I am the recipient of a personal letter from Dick Cheney, thanking me for my support and presenting to me my "Republican National Committee Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of [my] outstanding support."

Though, I've never given them money.

I am not a registered Republican.

(And, truth be known, I didn't vote for their guy in the recent election.)

Still. I must admit that it is a rather handsome certificate. It's nice to see my name near Dick's, George's and Ken's signatures, even if my name is misspelled. I do appreciate the effort. I will have to give this some thought.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

It depends on how city limits are defined, but here are the top 11 (* is capital)

New York, N.Y.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Chicago, Ill.
Houston, Tex.
Philadelphia, Pa.
*Phoenix, Ariz.
San Diego, Calif.
San Antonio, Tex.
Dallas, Tex.
Detroit, Mich.
San Jose, Calif.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Fascinating stuff, Hank. A step or two up from your UN diatribes. Go nuts!

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

My "diatribe?" How was my UN post not a reasonable question? Fringe wants to learn tax, me? I want to learn of the role of the UN. Why can't you explain it's function?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

No doubt I am merely expressing my middle-class prejudices, but it seems to me that a $1 million exemption lets anyone get a pretty substantial inheritance. Isn't $1 million enough? Why cry for the Paris Hiltons of the world?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I believe it has many functions. I'm not sure where to start. Why don't you read the UN Charter?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Do you have a job?

I posted a story about a UN action. In detail, I point out why that action seems of little help to the world. I ask those present can you please point to something worthwhile the UN has done- in context you've been hammering a man tapped to represent the US before the UN for asking similar questions- I thought, since you can ridicule this man you must be prepared to answer my question. Do you feel the "support Islam/fuck Israel" declarations are a benefit to the world, or is there something else?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I think that by giving countries like Pakistan an outlet for their "All we are saying/is give Islam a chance" sentiments, the UN serves a useful role. Nor is that the only thing the UN does. Based on your description, I don't think I would have voted for the resolution myself, but that's a different question.

eta:

And I do have a job, but I'm always willing to entertain other offers.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

See, I was spotting you teh $1m exemption. If the tax is an efficient one, and you make a cogent argument that it is (indeed, it is unavoidable and therefore does not create inefficiency, other than the timing of spending). So, I'd say no exemption, 50% all around. Drop the income tax accordingly.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

You ridicule people who respond to you by asking if they have a job, then you effectively ask them to take time from their jobs to answer your questions. Nicely played!

"Point to something worthwhile the UN has done." Google provides one advocate for them in the San Diego Tribune:

• The problem is that we tend to remember failures and discount success. We remember Rwanda and forget successful operations in El Salvador, Mozambique and Nambia. We focus on Kosovo, where the U.N. mission met stiff resistance, and forget Cyprus, where the United Nations has preserved the peace since 1964. We remember the disaster in Somalia and forget the mission in Kashmir, where the "blue hats" of the United Nations have played a role in keeping the peace between the nuclear powers of India and Pakistan since 1949. Today, there are 18 peacekeeping missions in the world with more requests for new missions than the United Nations can handle. If U.N. peacekeeping has failed, why does this demand exist?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Depends how many people that $1 million is split among. You have four kids and ten grandkids, and it isn't so much.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

There's that intuition that children should get to receive some inheritance from their parents. It's hard to justify from an efficiency standpoint, unless you think that most of us will work harder if we know we can leave something to our kids. We know this intuition is a powerful one, because it's what the GOP is using to sell a plan to make rich people much richer.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Dallasist Fuck.

[Apparently, according to one source, the Metroplex is larger population-wise than your beloved Houston - http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...n%20%282000%29]

[I know; who cares.]

[Other than RT and me.]

[Hell, I don't even live there anymore.]

[Anyone have any interesting links to pass on? I'm kinda bored.]

[Carry on.]

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Some Norwegian environmentalists are thinking outside the box -- or rather about the box, outside -- to further the cause. Go them.

(spree: initial link is work-safe; from there, caveat emptor)

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

If you read the WaPo article you posted a link to, less than 5% (or 3%) of the people who die have to do estate tax returns. That seems pretty progressive to me.

ETA oh, you don't want any progressivity in the estate tax? Huh. The homestead exemption is not unlike the estate tax exemption (or whatever that's called); and, while not as many people are exempt from property taxes, the tax rate is quite low.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Sure, but as I replied to Ty my point relates to what should be not what is.

If it's morally acceptable to tax estates because, hey, the person is dead, then why is it morally not acceptable to tax small estates? Since we're not worried about efficiency, why draw the line at $1m? Why not $10m? Why not $100k?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Because in general, estates of that size contain little more than the family home. A mere $100k exemption would require a forced sale of the family home in order to pay the estate taxes, and forced sales driven by tax needs often result in fire sale prices.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Well, at a certain point, it's not efficient to administer the estate tax -- the transaction costs outweigh the benefits of the revenue. Like, a lot of states have ways to handle property post-death without going through probate, if the estate is small enough.

I could go for your $100k, though, that's harder if it's a younger person dying and they have little kids who need to be provided for. And if we do a broad exemption for life insurance, that's a huge loophole that people will start to use all their assets on.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Because we all have a powerful psychological need to deny the permanence and inevitability of death by thinking that our works will continue in the world after we leave, and that these works will continue to benefit those whom we love.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

But not over a certain amount?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Right. If you want to cheat death by leaving your money to others, fine, but you really aren't cheating death any more with every additional $1 million.

That's my working hypothesis.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Sure, but your hypothesis fails to account for the fact that $10m is the new $1m.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Are you expecting to live with mom until she kicks it?

How many kids actually move into their parents home after they die? Sure, it happens sometimes. But I'd guess that 99% of people sell their parents' homes after death (and the step-up in basis), and take the cash.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Not in my family it ain't.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

2.

Interesting Idea
 

Of course we are allowed to make changes to the common law. That wasn't what I was saying. I was simply suggesting to Club that the notion of property rights and the right to bequeath one's property after death are in fact historically intertwined and have been from the beginning.

Hey, do I piss in your chili pot? Estate planning is one of my big growth targets for my practice. If they repeal it permanently, I may have to find more legitimate work.

Heh. My parents left for Mexico for the weekend this morning. They called me from the airport to ask if I remembered where they put the codicil to their will changing the administrator from my now ex-aunt to me.

I told them not to die in the next 5 days, because I had no idea what they were talking about.

You may get a call...

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Spoken like a true Republican -- who recognizes how important it is to keep the family farm from being sold (all 3 of them that may be affected by an estate tax with a reasonable exemption), but can't recognize the reality of people who can't afford to buy a home before their parents die.

Not everyone gets to go to college and law school and start a new career. People who are not in your economic class like to leave their family homes behind to family members, and in some instances descendants depend on that.

More importantly, but not suprisingly, you are missing, or ignoring, the point. The fed gov't has decided that promoting fire sales of homes is bad. Fire sales are what happen when people need to sell a major asset to pay estate taxes -- again, that's something Repubs recognize when it applies to families with multimillion dollar business interests, but apparently not when it comes to middle class families whose only significant assets are their homes.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

How many hours did Ty bill last year? Doesn't the firm have a minimum?

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I'm sure that just as you readily marshal statistics about the 50 farmers for whom estate tax reform might matter, you'll be able to demonstrate that there are, in fact, many thousands of people who die each year, leaving their house to their children, and that their children move into them.

The fact that a middle-class person has most of his/her assets in a house doesn't mean that it won't be liquidated anyway upon death. If it's being liquidated, whether to pay taxes or not, it becomes irrelevant that they might have to pay estate tax.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

I'm pretty sure Hank knows better than to make fun of that of which he is ignorant, merely because he doesn't understand it.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

My income tax course I took pass/fail. Then the guy hands out a syllabus where he tells us when he'll call on each of us. That was a bad combo- I only studied for 2 nights. I do know that if we give a benefit to highly comped employees we have to also give it to lower comped or its income- beyond that I know nothing more.

That is a terrible way to teach a law class. My knowledge of corporations is similarly crippled for the same reason.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Sure. Blame the teacher. The reason for your disability is because you didn't study. Take ownership of the problem.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

That proposal would increase inefficiency and create a capital drain. At present, a relatively small number of taxpayers, all extremely wealthy and willing to push lines farther than many, engage in parking of assets offshore in order to minimize the estate tax. If we were to eliminate the exemption and take away the bracketing, then far more taxpayers would engage in parking. Many of the ones who would engage in such behavior would be prey to unscrupulous promoters who would take advantage of many people who can't really afford to play those kinds of games.

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

If I type "Fire sale" slowly, will you get it?

A sale driven by the need to pay taxes causes fire sale.

The estate tax is based on FMV -- meaning, what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller, with neither being under any compulsion to buy or sell.

So, if the value of a home for purposes of calculating the amount in the estate is determined according to FMV, but then the home is sold very quickly because the heirs need the cash to pay taxes, an even more substantial portion of the value of the home goes to pay taxes than what the tax code would appear to dictate.

If you think that the reason driving the sale is irrelevant, then talk to a lawyer who has had to handle the sale of a business in order to pay estate taxes. I had a big case that dealt with this very issue and speaking with these people was quite interesting, and educational (of course, I had to set aside my gut feelings about what 99% of the population does and actually listen, so it might not work for you).

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

Ty doesn't work for me. Which is sad, because he works like a dog.

Have I mentioned lately how much I fucking hate Republicans? (spree: Texas legislature)

Death Tax Relief for America's Farmers. All 50 of them. The rest? Bonus!
 

The only thing I didn't understand that was in any way material to the discussion is the historic background for recognizing wills. Sue me. Everything else was probably interesting to the tax lawyers, but not germane to what we were discussing.

This is starting to feel like my conference call this morning, which ended in the corporate lawyers on both sides yelling at the tax lawyers for both sides to just give us the fucking answer. We don't want to know what fucking code section it is pursuant to, or how these types of deals use to be done pre the 1986 amendments. Just tell us whether or not the structure works.