There was no Estate Duty at all in 2010

[denem]

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/feb2010/sb2010025_791431.htm

The estate tax changes date back to President Bush's tax cuts in 2001, is that right?

Yes. In 2001, Bush pushed through tax cuts that gradually ramped up the exemption threshold after which estate tax applies. Congress instituted a 10-year sunset provision to the legislation, with a suspension in 2010 and exemption levels reverting back to 2001 levels in 2011

The political gamesmanship was that once it's repealed it was going to be very difficult to reinstate it. The Republicans don't want an estate tax at all and the Democrats don't want to be the ones accused of reinstating the "death tax," but they may be willing to run out the clock until 2011. The really bad thing is that both of them are playing political games with people's lives.

Whatever else, the GOP will have to explain to the Tea Party why, after all the primary posturing, THEY collaborated in reinstating the dreaded Death Tax.

Whatever your opinion of extending the Bush Tax cuts, it's a nice talking point.

[bluestateguy]

1. Hrmph

I wonder how many trust funders are hoping that the family patriarch will kick off in the next 2 weeks.

[gratuitous]

2. And how many might lend a little assistance

Some of the more stubborn mortal coils may need some help getting shuffled off.

[hfojvt]

3. yeah, sure it is

for them.

"We forced the evil Obama to cut the death tax in half."

KLEIN: So how much does this cost? With a $1 million exemption and a 55 percent rate—in other words, what will happen if we do nothing—the estate tax would raise about $700 billion over the next 10 years. The Lincoln-Kyl version would raise less than $300 billion. And the compromise most Democrats have coalesced around—which was the 2009 level, with a $3.5 million exemption and a 45 percent rate—would've brought in a bit less than $400 billion.

From $700 billion down to a mere $300 billion.

[soryang]

4. The permanent alienation of wealth from commerce...

...is what the inheritance tax is meant to prevent. The permanent alienation of wealth from commerce is what characterized feudalism. Dumping that system is what the French and American revolutions were all about. An aristocratic title is not just a label, it is a propertied estate that supports a dynasty of heirs forever, with unearned income. Such was rejected by the founding fathers.

The desire of the current privileged class of wealth to have their heirs permanently avoid the inheritance tax is nothing less than the rejection of the concept of bourgeois democracy and the reinstatement of a fee or toll based society, where the wealthy live off unearned fees, or fiefdoms forever. It is particularly telling that they wish to do so without the obligation of a fair reciprocal obligation to pay taxes to the sovereign while they are alive. In other words, as in the ancien regime, they are completely corrupt.

The notion of dispensing with enterprise and living as feudal lords generation after generation,"and to their heirs forever," is antithetical to a free people. For serfs and slaves and their masters, a society based upon status of birth is okay.

[Krakowiak]

5. Except without ANY vote.. it would have returned to pre Bush cut levels of up to 55% on 1 million