The Estate Tax

I don't mean to hit this topic so soon but I noticed something in the papers. There seems to be more newspaper and magazine articles citing an increased interest in keeping the estate tax. This is far different from a few years ago when it was the opposite. All we heard about is the large number of small businesses and farmers being slammed by the estate tax (factually untrue but symbolically worked like a charm for repeal proponents).

The one article that I read recently, which is similar to others, ("Keeping the nation's estate tax in place", Pub. June 8, 2009 in the Concord Monitor) basically is saying that with the mess in the economy and the mounting deficit, the tax is one of the more "harmless" taxes proposed to deal with the nation's situation. This article, as you can imagine, seems to have a pro-estate tax bent. What I like about the article, however, is the history of the issue that it provided. It talks about how 18 of the very wealthy families contributed to a couple of organizations that were part of that successful campaign against what they called the "death tax". Again, this was a few years ago.

So, where are we on the tax? In April, the senate voted to increase the exemption and reduce the rate to 35%. I believe the House is still voting to leave the tax at its current 2011 level, 1 million per person. We will likely see something soon. My point though is how during hard times, people's opinions change and the public may not be as cavalier about a tax and may be thinking "it's better them then me", especially since the very wealthy are not a sympathetic group when the rest of the public is struggling.