Debunking Myths Around The Estate Tax
Another commie liberal attacking America’s true economic achievers…
Warren Buffett’s Statement to Congress on Estate Taxes
Mr. Chairman, Senators, I appreciate the opportunity to express a few views on the estate tax.
I will limit my remarks to three points.
The first relates to the intellectual dishonesty employed by those who use the phrase ‘death tax.’ This term is clever, it is Orwellian, and it is, if you’ll pardon the expression, dead wrong.
More than 2.4 million Americans will die this year. About 12,000 of them will leave an estate that will be taxed when the exemption goes to $3 million, as Senator Grassley mentioned. It will be 9600 estimated and it’s been 19,000 when the exemption was (lower.)
That means that 99-and-a-half percent of estates will be tax-free. You would have to attend 200 funerals to be at one at which the decedent’s estate owed a tax. Indeed, far more people who die receive a large tax benefit. I don’t think that’s generally understood. Namely, a stepped up basis on appreciated assets.
If people insist on renaming the estate tax, it would be more appropriately labeled the ‘death present.’
The second point I would like to make is that in a country that prides itself on equality of opportunity, it is becoming anything but that, as the gap between the super rich and the middle class widens in dramatic fashion…
Twenty years ago, 1987, it took $220 million dollars to make the list. Now it takes $1.3 billion, about a six-for-one increase. The total wealth of the list in 1987 was then $220 billion. Now it’s $1.54 trillion, exactly a seven-for-one increase.
Tax law changes have benefited this group, including me, in a huge way. During that same period, the average American went exactly nowhere on the economic front. His income went from a median $26,061 to $48,201, almost exactly the increase of the CPI during the 20 years.
He’s been on a treadmill while the super rich have been on a spaceship.
