Who Benefits From Repealing the Estate Tax?
Lots of folks incorrectly think that their families will benefit from repealing the estate tax. The federal estate tax only gets levied upon folks with:
- An individual estate worth at least $5.5 million
- A couple's estate worth at least $11 million
- This impacts about two out of every 1,000 families
Remember, the estate tax exempts the first $5.49 million (or $10.99 million for couples).
If you're reading this right now, you probably don't need to worry about your kids or grandkids paying this tax.
Even though very few people have to pay this tax, the government will get about $19 billion from the estate tax this year.
Source: http://fortune.com/2017/04/27/trump-tax-plan-estate-tax/
To put that number in perspective, the government will collect about $3 trillion from all taxpayers this year. When you compare a few billion against trillions, the amount seems small. On the other hand, to most of us it looks like a significant amount of money that could help subsidize a lot of school lunches, housing for elderly people, and maybe some sustainable energy efforts.
Are There Any Arguments in Favor of Repeal?
The only argument that I've seen in favor of repeal that makes sense deals with small business owners who may have millions of dollars tied up in their companies and not really liquid. IMO, this might be addressed as a different issue. Nobody wants to see businesses getting liquidated to pay taxes, but I'm not sure how often this happens. It seems like those business owners could hire a good accountant to do some tax and estate planning.
What do you Steemers think?