"(The) death tax is about the reddest-meat tax topic that you can find in the small-business and entrepreneurial community."
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[ WASHINGTON REPORT ]
Can Congress be sounding the death knell for the "death tax?"
What had been a major sticking point for the United States Senate was scheduled to come up for a vote early this month, reported USA Today, as members of the chamber gear up for a vote on estate tax repeal permanency.
USA Today reported that business groups were kicking into high gear, mounting advertising and lobbying campaigns to bring their positions to members of Congress and their staffs on permanently repealing the estate tax, also dubbed the "death tax." Pro and anti-death tax groups were planning to broadcast ads in key states that support their position. "We've never been this close before," Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, told the newspaper.
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 reduced estate tax rates and increased the exemption every year until the tax would be repealed entirely during 2010. However, unless repeal-permanency legislation is signed into law before then, the estate tax will return in full force in 2011. Many industry associations maintain the position that the estate tax is regressive and hinders the ability to pass on a family business from one generation to the next.
"All death taxes are inherently unfair," the National Association of Convenience Stores writes on its Web site. "They constitute double taxation. People work their entire lives, pay their taxes and struggle to create an estate of value that provides security to the family and employees they leave behind. Death taxes are fiscally and economically counterproductive. Less than 1.5 percent of federal revenues come from these taxes. Experts estimate that anywhere from 65 percent to 100 percent of that revenue is offset by administrative and compliance expenses."
"Killing the tax has been the focus of a decade-long struggle by some of the nation's largest businesses started by families, including Wal-Mart stores, Mars candies and Campbell's Soup," wrote USA Today, adding that the House of Representatives passed legislation to permanently repeal the estate tax back in April.
"(The) death tax is about the reddest-meat tax topic that you can find in the small-business and entrepreneurial community," National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors president Dirk Van Dongen told the newspaper.
However, Steve Ricchetti of the Coalition for America's Priorities, a group that favors the estate tax, told USA Today that repealing the tax after 2010 could "cost more than $70 billion a year in today's dollars, resulting in spending cuts or a larger federal budget deficit."
According to Yale University's Ian Shapiro, coauthor of Death by a Thousand Cuts, budgetary arguments about whether to repeal the estate tax are difficult arguments to make.
"Math doesn't move people in politics, and moral arguments do," he told the newspaper.
USA Today noted that members of Congress being targeted by business groups included Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Max Baucus, D-Mont., Evan Bayh, D-Ind., John McCain, R-Ariz., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio. |
