Death to the Death Tax? Not Just Yet

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 30, 2001 | by Jamie Dettmer, | Ted Hayes

On April 4, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Jennifer Dunn of Washington state, repealing the federal estate tax by a comfortable 274-154 vote. The problem: Most of the cut will not occur until the year 2011 -- and the Senate has yet to pass a similar bill.

All the more reason, say "death-tax" opponents, for anti-inheritance tax rallies such as the one that occurred at the U.S. Capitol just last month, sponsored by David Keene of the American Conservative Union.

"The inheritance tax is a death tax -- the death of the American Dream," said Christopher Wysocki, president of the Small Business Survival Committee. "If I work all my life in a small business, all of my wealth is in my business and its capital stock. I don't have cash reserves to pay a 60 percent death tax. I or my heirs must sell the business and my life's work along with it."

"Raising enough cash to pay the tax gives me a good reason to invest offshore," said John Robinson, a midsized Illinois manufacturer of high-tech equipment. "If I manufacture in China -- where wages are 18 cents an hour -- I can build up enough cash to pay the death tax and keep the business in the family. Of course," he added, "America loses 500 jobs in the meantime."

"When the death tax takes away half of our inheritance," said Erin O'Leary, a multiple-sclerosis sufferer who heads Disabled Americans for Death Tax Relief, "many of the disabled go on welfare and collect tax money."

"The death tax accounts for only 8.2 percent of the $190 billion given in charity every year," said Robert Huberty, executive vice president of the Capital Research Center. "Repeal of the tax would have relatively little effect on charitable giving."

Lewis Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee and dean of the antitax baronage, summed up the rally's purpose: "We are here to demand the death of the death tax," he said, "an absolute, black-flag death."