[AlexdeLarge]

Tax Laws Encourage Euthanasia In 2010
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/12/tax-laws-encourage-euthanasia-in-2010.html

A lifetime friend Dave writes: "Because Congress is populated by venal idiots, the estate tax expires on January 1, 2010 only to rise again on January 1, 2011. So rich old people everywhere are deliberately engineering their lives to end during the next calendar year"

With that backdrop, please consider Rich Cling to Life to Beat Tax Man

[crude_intentions]

Step 1: Create "charity" and name kids to board of directors

Step 2: Leave all belongings to said "charity"

Step 3 ????

Step 4 Profit

[efarmer]

I would like to offer a very lovable and respectful efarmer to the wealthy
"it's a great year to die" persons who have not had the pleasure nor the
joyful experience of conceiving or rearing an efarmer of their own.

I am now officially up for adoption.

[Ludi]

It's easy to avoid "death taxes" by gifting your belongings while you live.

Estate taxes are a non-issue except for the extremely rich, for whom they are a non-issue because they have plenty of money to pay them.

[Revi]

Estate taxes make up a huge chunk of the federal budget. That means that they will be short another 20 billion or so.

It doesn't surprise me that the rich will figure out a way to die on schedule.

There's no way to avoid death, but taxes may be avoidable this year for them!

[dinopello]

The estate tax is always an interesting debate.

What would George Washington or Thomas Paine say ?

In two works, The Rights of Man (1791) and Agrarian Justice (1797), Paine argues for the adoption of an inheritance tax in England to balance out the unfair distribution of “landed property.” For Paine it is common sense that God gave “the Earth as an inheritance” to all of God’s children. Therefore, he proposed an inheritance tax to create a national fund that (1) would give the sum of 15 pounds sterling to everyone turning 21 years old as a compensation for the loss of their “natural inheritance,” and (2) would give a sum of 10 pounds a year to every person over the age of 50 as an early version of Social Security.

[Sixstrings]

Starting Jan. 1, the estate tax -- which can erase nearly half of a wealthy person's estate -- goes away for a year. For families facing end-of-life decisions in the immediate future, the change is making one of life's most trying episodes only more complex.

"I have two clients on life support, and the families are struggling with whether to continue heroic measures for a few more days," says Joshua Rubenstein, a lawyer with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in New York. "Do they want to live for the rest of their lives having made serious medical decisions based on estate-tax law?"

To make it easier on their heirs, some clients are putting provisions into their health-care proxies allowing whoever makes end-of-life medical decisions to consider changes in estate-tax law.

Of course, plenty of taxpayers themselves are eager to live to see the new year. One wealthy, terminally ill real-estate entrepreneur has told his doctors he is determined to live until the law changes.

"Whenever he wakes up," says his lawyer, "He says: 'What day is it? Is it Jan. 1 yet?'"

The situation is causing at least one person to add the prospect of euthanasia to his estate-planning mix, according to Mr. Katzenstein of Proskauer Rose. An elderly, infirm client of his recently asked whether undergoing euthanasia next year in Holland, where it's legal, might allow his estate to dodge the tax.

His answer: Yes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126213588339309657.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_us

My goodness, the love of money truly knows no bounds.

I have no problem with the sick and elderly planning their estates as they choose (though traveling to Holland for tax-related euthanasia is really disturbing). The problem I have here is the ominous prospect of what happens a year from now as the tax comes back into effect -- we're going to have people pulling the plug on grandma just to save on taxes.

[Ludi]

If grandma had planned ahead she could have avoided all this by gifting her estate to her heirs over a period of years.

Estate taxes are a non-issue except for the careless and ignorant, or pathologically tight-fisted.

[Ibon]

If grandma had planned ahead she could have avoided all this by gifting her estate to her heirs over a period of years.

Estate taxes are a non-issue except for the careless and ignorant, or pathologically tight-fisted.

I agree. Up to 20000 a year can be given tax free to each individual family member. In a decade with say 4 children this adds up to close to a million dollars.

You would think the really wealthy have already trust funds and offshore accounts that would make the timing of your death around tax laws unnecessary. But there are those old Mr. Scrooge distrustful types who hoarded it all their lives and kept it all close to home and it would be these very miserly distrustful types that could make this decision at their times of death.

To their last dying breath they clenched their fists around a singular focus on money. A satire movie should be made around this subject.

[Ludi]

I agree. Up to 20000 a year can be given tax free to each individual family member.

I'm not sure it's quite $20,000. But still, it's a lot!

"How many annual exclusions are available?
The annual exclusion applies to gifts to each donee. In other words, if you give each of your children $11,000 in 2002-2005, $12,000 in 2006-2008, and $13,000 on or after January 1, 2009, the annual exclusion applies to each gift."

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/art ... ,00.html#3

[gollum]

I have no sympathy for the rich, but in doing **** like taxing inheritance on things like family businesses and farms the government earns no favor with me.

[Ludi]

I have no sympathy for the rich, but in doing **** like taxing inheritance on things like family businesses and farms the government earns no favor with me.

There's no reason to get taxed on those things - they can be transferred to heirs in various ways during one's lifetime. Land can be given as gifts, or put in a trust. Businesses can be transferred in other ways also.

I'm not sure why inheritance of business and farms shouldn't be taxed in some way. Should only corporate assets be taxed, and not the assets of natural persons?

[mattduke]

The death tax destroys family farms and businesses.

[Tyler_JC]

The death tax destroys family farms and businesses.

The death tax only affects a very small number of very wealthy estates.

I agree that a death tax applied to all estates would be bad for family farms and businesses (and for society in general).

But the government doesn't tax all estates. They've been messing around with the limits for years but the tax doesn't start until an estate reaches at least several million dollars. That saves the vast majority of small businesses and farms from being subject to this particular tax.

Most estates subject to the "death tax" are made up of untaxed capital gains. The Walton Family, for example.

[Ludi]

The death tax destroys family farms and businesses.

Myth.

[mcgowanjm]

The death tax destroys family farms and businesses.

Myth.

Fact: Only 1.6% of Americans will inherit more than $100,000.

Sep 15, 2009 ... Only 1.6 percent of Boomers will inherit more than $100000, ..... are about 132 million jobs, americans will have to pay $2500 per job. ...
www.zerohedge.com/.../guest-post-econom ... our-future

$250K FDIC Insurance Limit Helps Only Top 1.6% of Americans And even if what you point out is true, that it will help only 1.6% of ...... It's always been very easy to be insured for a lot more than $100000 by asking ...
www.bankaholic.com/250k-fdic-insurance-is-overrated/

[mattduke]

About 1.6% have what it takes to live below their means, save, and then risk it all to become entrepreneurs.

[mcgowanjm]

About 1.6% have what it takes to live below their means, save, and then risk it all to become entrepreneurs.

About 1.6% have what it takes to get bail outs and influence
policy makers to write loop holes allowing for tax avoidance.

See Revocable Trusts Farms for details,

Capitalism is dead, The Top .01% are as wealthy as they've ever been. That includes the Roman Senators.

Income gains have been even more pronounced among those at the very top of the top 1%. The incomes of the top one-tenth of 1% (0.1%) of U.S. households have grown more rapidly than the incomes of the top 1% of households as a whole, rising by 58%, or $1.8 million per household, since 2002. The share of the nation’s income flowing to the top one-tenth of 1% increased from 6.5% in 2002 to 9.1% in 2006. This is the highest level since 1928(
ever).

The IRS data go back to 1986. The share of after-tax income that the top one percent of filers received in 1997 and each successive year to date is the highest recorded over this period. The share of after-tax income the bottom 90 percent of tax filers received is the lowest.

See the trend?: The Bottom 90% become Debt Slaves. Which would actually be worse (which blacks discovered after getting their 'freedom') than being just slaves.

[Ludi]

About 1.6% have what it takes to live below their means, save, and then risk it all to become entrepreneurs.

Hogwash.

Most small business owners are firmly in the middle class.

<<<< business owner.

This defense of the rich thing is so weird to me. The rich don't need you to defend them. They're doing fine.

[mattduke]

Let's kill the rich and steal their property! If we all vote to do it then it's ok! The rich use the government to extort money for themselves. You are all the same: using the government to steal from each other.