Eek. > Kakki, an "estate" in Wisconsin is liable to be "cute" to the Californian in a > $1 or $2 million home, but the Wisconsin "estate" is liable to be worth more. > And of course, for the $1 or $2 million California "estate" and the Wisconsin > farm, neither will be affected by estate tax given the marital deductions and > the slightest financial planning, or for a single person, the regular exemption > and slightly more financial planning.
I'll try it again. Family farm in California = $2 milliion. Same type of family farm (comparable house, acreage, relative income) in Wisconsin = $150,000. Cost of living and doing business in California = $XXX - cost of living and doing business in Wisconsin = $X. Under the law one effectively gets confiscated from the family heirs and one doesn't. Fair? No, not by any stretch. Economics vary considerably across the U.S. It's not the family in California's "fault" that some politician from another part of the country doesn't understand economic variables and just thinks $2 million sounds like a ton of money and a bit too much to be exempted from taxes. If the end result is that one citizen has property they and their family worked hard for years to acquire and maintain confiscated and one doesn't because the economic numbers in their part of the country is different, that is wrong and stupid. If people really think it is so crucial to have this estate tax, then the least they could do is come up with a plan based on individual, regional economic factors rather than an across the board arbitrary amount. > To put "estate" in quotation marks and dismiss Wisconsin farmers was not > intentional, but as a rural midwesterner - Wisconsin is just Michigan on the > wrong side of the lake - it comes across wrong, condescending, in a way that I > know that you did not mean at all. No, no, of course I wasn't being condescending. Previous posts seem to make a point about an ESTATE implying it was like some huge mansion worth millions of dollars owned by a rich person. On the other hand, if I hadn't put it in quotation marks, I'm sure someone here would have questioned me for equating a family farm with an ESTATE and say I don't know the difference. > And yes, philosophically, very fair. That is why it was a part of the > philosophy of the founding fathers of this country, who were determined to > prevent an aristocracy from developing in this country. ! Most of the founders were wealthy landowners trying to escape the aristocracy taking a piece of their earnings. I read recently that the revolution started after their outrage at taxes being raised to 3%. Hahahaha!!! (My, how times have changed). The founding fathers wanted people to have freedom, including economic freedom and personal property protections. > The rich want all the benefits of this country and don't want to pay for it. How can you say that? I've heard that the upper 2% of income earners pay something like 50% of the taxes. We are taxed, taxed, taxed on everthing! It is fecking oppressive. We are approaching slavery the way we are taxed. Even serfs in medieval times only had to work for their lords and masters for like 10 years and then were FREE. Kakki
