Moosenoose, you are stirring the pot, and I'm cool with that...free exchange of ideas and all. However, all taxes can be viewed as theft, by your definition...for every dollar I spend, the government "steals" a nickel in sales tax. But it isn't really theft, because all of us who choose to remain here and submit to our government's authority and protection impliedly consent to pay assessed taxes to fund govenment activity.
The issue is whether the estate tax is so patently unfair, when viewed in the context of all other "unfair" taxes, that we should do away with it. I don't think so. You are entitled to your opinion, but let's not misquote others or the tax itself. pan6467 is saying that his father accepts that having acquired wealth with the help of government benefits (and therefore our tax dollars), he's o.k. with giving SOME of that back...but NONE of the first $1.5 mil in 2005 ($2 mil in 2006), and not even half of the excess above that amount, under current law.
The goverment may be here to serve us, but it can't do that for free. Under the current estate tax structure, a multimillionaire decedent will leave a multimillion dollar estate for his heirs, and the 99% or more of us who aren't multimillionaires won't pay anything. I invite you to explain how this result is so inequitable, as compared with other taxes imposed upon us, to compel estate tax repeal.
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