New Tax Bill (Page 3)

I truly don't understand how any sane person can even question the ability of somebody passing what they worked their entire life on to their children.  I feel more revolted by it than somebody breaking into my home with a gun and stealing everything I own.

I agree.

We have saved and saved, and invested well. If all goes like we have planned for, we will leave our children a few million dollars. What would you have us do with that money if not leave it to our kids? Who else could think they have a claim to that money that we made and saved?  Yes, I understand that it's not a lot of money and maybe not "perpetual wealth" like you are talking about.......but I will say this, NOBODY HAS A CLAIM TO IT EXCEPT MY CHILDREN, WHO IT WAS MEANT FOR. 

I hope I raised them well enough to fight for it if need be. It's mine, and I'll leave it to I want to leave it to.

Is this where I say you need to stop reading Huffpo and CNN?  ;-)

I do understand the arguments and I'm certainly not faulting you for believing what you believe, but it really boils down to you feel it's OK for the government to seize the assets of people that are successful for no other reason than the fact that they're successful.  What if I say you've been too successful and use my government to take your assets, is that OK?  If it's only a number then what's the right number.  As for there being a lot of people who agree with you, of course they agree with you because it's always the richer guy that's getting hosed and they're the ones getting her money.  So basically as long as you have a bigger mob, it's ok to break the door down and take what they earned.

Government's job isn't to pick winners and losers, it's to make a fair playing field. 

The reason there's so much wealth disparity now is because of the economic shift of things like a kid in college writing a website for people to friend all their families is now worth billions of dollars.  In the traditional economy you'd have to build a company for decades to be worth a billion dollars.  Nothing wrong with that, but it's creating new wealth in ways it didn't exist before and it also provides many more avenues for the "have nots" to make it.

Apparently Feinstein agrees that the tax bill doesn't help the wealthy

I read an interesting article a while back that talked about allowing a Federal deduction for state income tax was nothing more than redistributing income from low tax states to high tax states.  Basically enabling folks in higher tax states to pay less Federal tax so others have to pick up the slack.  Kind of interesting discussion point all by itself.

My personal philosophy is that I don't think anyone should get to deduct anything and everybody should be charged the same percentage no matter how little or how much they make.  That's the only fair way to tax people, but we all know that will never happen.

I don't think eliminating the SALT deduction bolsters the estate tax argument I think it makes it even harder to make because you're being taxed on the money you earn by the Federal and State Governments, and the Federal portion is even greater now.  So because you had to pay more taxes on the income you earned it's now justified for them to steal your estate when you die?

As for the additional tax refund for lower income people I'd say that money is very significant because most people in that range claim Single 0 or 1 and use their tax refund money for major purchases.  So, yes you're absolutely correct that $27 a week isn't very much but getting an additional $1400 check at tax time is pretty substantial.  My wife and I were dirt poor when George W Bush increased the child tax credit and we thought we were the richest people on the block with the extra money.  :-)

I think I'm getting hosed.  I live in Nebraska.  lol

I guess I'm not really sure what that has to do with SALT exemptions and estate taxes.  If a person in say Florida is getting more "benefit" from the Federal government then I don't see why a person in California should get an extra deduction because they have high state income taxes, or a person in Nebraska should have a significant portion of their net worth confiscated versus passing it on to their children.

OK, that does make sense and helps counter the argument about low income tax states "subsidizing" higher income tax states.