Quotes & Sayings About Estate Tax

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It's not a popular position. — Bill Gates

[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century. — Thomas Frank

The estate taxes, on balance, are good. They get people to give money to charity, and they prevent these family dynasties which keep other people from having opportunities. It may be good for a family, but for society it's probably not good. And I've always been in favor of having an estate tax. — Michael Bloomberg

I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in ... a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, ... increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. — Theodore Roosevelt

Democrats who see virtue in the estate tax are doing the equivalent of aborting future enterprises. They deprive businesses of oxygen with their support for capital gains taxes and disregard for contracts. — Amity Shlaes

The Catholic Church must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government. — Avro Manhattan

Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free. — Lawrence Wright

Obama's statements also use a narrative structure, complete with heroes and villains: Ending the estate tax is a threat to the most vulnerable people - taking away money for what they desperately need. They are the victims. The villains are those who would take it from them - conservative legislators and some of the nation's wealthiest families, who have spent tens of millions to lobby for the repeal of this tax. The hero, the rescuer, is you, the voter, who can change the course of the nation. Persuade your legislators to vote for what is moral, and turn them out of office if they refuse to do the right thing. The — George Lakoff

For example, "1031" is jargon for Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, which allows a seller to delay paying taxes on a piece of real estate that is sold for a capital gain through an exchange for a more expensive piece of real estate. Real estate is one investment vehicle that allows such a great tax advantage. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

All those predictions about how much economic growth will be created by this, all of those new jobs, would be created by the things we wanted - the extension of unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts. An estate tax for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires - virtually none. — Anthony Weiner

Everyone's an equal shareholder. Birth shares are inalienable, and death duties are unavoidable. The estate tax is one hundred per cent. In between, you can buy and sell and earn as much as you like. — Ken MacLeod

If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. — Ayn Rand

deductible, depreciable, and deferrable - are about reducing your taxable income. No investment does that better than real estate, which offers unprecedented tax advantages both while you own it and when you sell it. Millionaire — Gary Keller

When you can identify a specific tax that people don't like, and this is one that was designed for the Rockefellers, for the Carnegies in 1916, to fund World War I, but now it's beginning to hit small business people, real estate holders, a lot of people well down the income scale who just spent a life building assets. Suddenly they get hit with a 40%, 50% tax rate. — Paul Gigot

Taxes will eventually become a voluntary process, with the possible exception of real estate-the one physical thing that does not move easily and has computable value ... wait until that's all there is left to tax, when the rest of the things we buy and sell come from everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere. — Nicholas Negroponte

In 2010 the U.S. will have a payroll tax rate increase, an estate tax increase, and income tax increases. There's also a tax increase coming in 2010 on carried interest. This rate will rise from its current level of 15 percent to 35 percent, and then it will rise again in 2011. — Arthur Laffer

The estate tax punishes years of hard work and robs families of part of their heritage by imposing a huge penalty on inheritance after death - a tax on money that has already been taxed. — Mike Fitzpatrick

It is no secret that our tax code is drastically outdated and burdensome to all Americans. Fortunately, more and more people are aware daily of the inequities that arise from things such as the estate tax, and it has come to the forefront of Congress' agenda. — Jeff Miller

I favor the abolition of all Social Security, Medicare and estate taxes. In their place, we should create a simple income tax system that has no deductions or credits at all. — Ari Fleischer

I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here, but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich, but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation. — Paul Ryan

When you get rid of the estate tax," he (Warren Buffet) said, "you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games. — Barack Obama

Finally, Obama's remarks are carefully constructed to undermine the arguments of conservatives, who frame the social programs funded by taxation as government handouts to the undeserving. Obama flips the taxes-as-handouts frame on its head, to yield a frame in which tax breaks are handouts to the rich, and the estate tax is a transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to wealthy individuals - a frame that tells a vital truth. It — George Lakoff

In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth. — Thomas Piketty

If we completely repealed the estate tax, it would provide an estimated $32 billion tax break for the Walton family - the founders of Wal-Mart. — Bernie Sanders

The estate tax has been a disaster. First of all it's double taxation, some people could even say it's triple taxation. — Donald Trump

In expectation of his demise, a successful businessman may sell out to his competitors to prepare his estate with readily marketable securities, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. The confiscatory death tax eliminates many family enterprises and promotes the growth of giant corporations. — Hans F. Sennholz

Among other strategies, he set up a "charitable lead trust" that enabled him to pass on his estate to his sons without inheritance taxes, so long as the sons donated the accruing interest on the principal to charity for twenty years. To maximize their self-interest, in other words, the Koch boys were compelled to be charitable. Tax avoidance was thus the original impetus for the Koch brothers' extraordinary philanthropy. As David Koch later explained, "So for 20 years, I had to give away all that income, and I sort of got into it. — Jane Mayer

I support exemptions from the estate tax to ensure that when Maine farm owners die, their families will be able to continue to farm the land that they have protected and lived on, often for generations. — Tom Allen

I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate. — George Carlin