Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case

[Thekla]

time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1106213,…
Web Exclusive | Nation
Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case

Senators look for a wealthy casualty of Katrina as evidence against the estate tax
By MASSIMO CALABRESI
Posted Saturday, Sep. 17, 2005

Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions’ legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky’s voice mail: " Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."

If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote. After hearing from Sessions, Apolinsky, an estate tax lawyer who says his firm includes three multi-billionaires among its clients, mobilized the American Family Business Institute, a Washington-based group devoted to estate tax repeal. They reached out to members along the Gulf Coast to hunt for the dead.

And for Hill backers of repeal, that’s only part of the problem. It’s been hard. Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it.Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina’s cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income. For now, getting repeal back on the agenda may depend on Apolinsky and his team of estate-sniffing sleuths, who are searching Internet obituaries among other places. **Has he found any victims of both the hurricane and the estate tax? “Not yet,” Apolinsky says. “But I’m still looking.”

**"Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast…What a well-written opening line
.
As an American, it’s hard to believe these vultures get votes. Talk about people digging their own graves…

 

[gilliam]

Had the disaster hit farm families in the West they could easily have made their case.

 

[Thekla]

gilliam:

Had the disaster hit farm families in the West they could easily have made their case.

Do you have some evidence of family farms being impacted by the estate tax? It’s a Trojan Horse used to make people think that that’s the problem they want to solve. It’s greed pure and simple and they like to hide behind the skirts of the family farm. It’s a canaard. Show me these hundreds and thousands of family farms destoyed in the last year by the estate tax; show me fifty - show me ten.

 

[gilliam]

Thekla:

Do you have some evidence of family farms being impacted by the estate tax? It’s a Trojan Horse used to make people think that that’s the problem they want to solve. It’s greed pure and simple and they like to hide behind the skirts of the family farm. It’s a canaard. Show me these hundreds and thousands of family farms destoyed in the last year by the estate tax; show me fifty - show me ten.

Who said anything about being destroyed? Not sure why you want to tax people for dying? What is the incentive?

 

[Thekla]

gilliam:

Who said anything about being destroyed? Not sure why you want to tax people for dying? What is the incentive?

By destroyed I mean that the heirs have lost the farm because of the estate tax. And the estate tax doesn’t impact the dead because their time on Earth is gone and they are hopefully with God.

 

[Jennifer123]

This is in regards to the federal “death tax” but it seems to make sense to me. IMHO it’s an issue eternally politicized to engage the parties’ core base, show that they are doing something all the while really doing nothing, much like the debate about minimum wage. The same result always seems to happen with both sides crowing victory. We shouldn’t be so quick to “throw down” (looking at the title of this thread)

brook.edu/views/op-ed/gale/20030727.htm

“It should be saved and enhanced, reformed to emphasize its virtues and minimize its costs. This could be done by closing loopholes, reducing rates modestly, indexing the tax for inflation and letting the exemption rise as scheduled. This would focus the tax on the truly wealthy and at the same time make it simpler and fairer.”