The Estate Tax Should Be Abolished.

You made this too easy, and you even invented facts along the way. 1) You argument that estates that pass from husband to the wife are not taxed is baseless because when the wife dies, the estate is taxed. It will always get taxed eventually no matter what. But, many states have elective shares where a spouse does not get the entire estate, and some passes to the children, which would be covered under the Estate tax. And who is to say that the wife didn't start the business and left it to the husband?; 2) Moreover, the money of the estate was already taxed when it was earned because it was once income. Think about it. If you earned $80,000 a year, you paid tax on it on April 15th. Then when you die, why should the government tax it again?; 3) Your argument that the Estate Tax only covers people who own estates at 4 million dollars or higher is just incorrect. You lose total credibility when you just make statistics up to suit your argument. The following chart demonstrates the exclusion rate (everything above this is taxed), and the rate for that amount. Year Exclusion Top rate 2001 $675,000 55% 2002 $1,000,000 50% 2003 $1,000,000 49% 2004 $1,500,000 48% 2005 $1,500,000 47% 2006 $2,000,000 46% 2007 $2,000,000 45% 2008 $2,000,000 45% 2009 $3,500,000 45% The fact of the matter is that even modest businesses that make very small profits often are worth well over 2 million dollars if it hires more than 20 people. If there isn't cash on hand, the family then needs to take out a massive loan in the millions of dollars just to keep the business going to pay the tax, or like I said, they fire the workforce, which is more likely. What is the saddest thing of all is that the longer the business has been in existence, the greater the chance it will be destroyed by the estate tax, and the greater the chance that more people will be fired. Large family businesses also help the local community, and the death of one person should not cause this absurd result of massive layoffs; 4) The Estate Tax certainly does apply to corporations. You again are just making up facts! If a family owned all the shares of the company, or are a majority shareholder, the total value of the shares are calculated as assets and are taxed. This means the shares of the company must be sold, leading to liquidation of the company; 5) Your statement that a few small businesses should be destroyed to save democracy is absurd on its face. Small businesses make up the fabric of this Country. In fact, the problem is much more common then you give credit (actually, you just made up facts). Your hatred of people keeping wealth in the family does not justify this at all. Overall, not only are you just wrong, but I pointed out two instances where you just made up fact: 1) The exclusion rate on the estate tax; 2) You stated that if a family owns stock in a non-publicly traded entity it would be immune from the Estate tax. That is just wrong, destroying all credibility you had when you entered the debate. If I may paraphrase your argument: The Estate Tax is good for Democracy. But, you did nothing whatsoever to demonstrate that. In fact, you dug your own grave.