Written by Bob Maschi   

Where there’s a will, there’s a way … of avoiding taxes

Except for tattoos, you can’t take it with you. Yep, once you die all that stuff you bought gets left behind. It doesn’t matter how much of it gets buried with you or how big your grave is; how hard you worked to earn it or to steal it. Good person, bad person or whatever religion you belong to. It all gets left behind.
What happens to all that stuff after your death is a major issue that too few people seem to be interested in.

Typically, either through a will or by law, the wealth that one leaves behind goes to family members. For working people, this seems pretty logical. When we die, our wives or husbands or partners or children will get our collection of stained rock-concert-t-shirts, box of broken video games and our moldy old high school year book. Oh, and let’s not forget that they’ll also split up that $14 left over in the checking account after your final hospital and burial expenses are paid off.

Yet, while this might make sense on an individual, family level regarding the personal property of working people, it makes very little sense on a social or economic level when dealing with the wealth of the super-rich.

We live in an economic system called capitalism. Proponents of capitalism (specifically, Republicans and libertarians) enjoy claiming that it is an extremely efficient system that rewards innovation and hard work with profit. They claim that those who devise the best ways of supplying people with what they demand are rewarded with monetary wealth. This system then encourages others to compete while creating ever better ways of supplying consumer demands.

On a simplistic and superficial level, it makes some sense until you bring in the topic of inheritance. What economic good has a child of wealth done to deserve vast riches? The best that can be claimed (if money is the most important factor) is that they chose their parents more wisely than the rest of us did. But they developed no product, created no invention, solved no complex problem, supplied no demand. Many of them have had every need and luxury handed to them from birth to death. Few know what it is like to work for a living. Fewer still will ever understand what it is like to go without a meal for lack of cash or worry about how to make last month’s rent or give more than a fleeting wink to an unexpected medical bill. They will never have the everyday experiences that working people face throughout their lives.

Yet, they are the automatic recipients of great wealth, having had to do nothing more important with their lives than breathing.

You might remember a few years ago when the right wing was rallying against the inheritance tax (aka the Estate Tax). Many, if not most, Americans, (not understanding the true implications of the debate) jumped on the conservative bandwagon. So it was with great support that the Republicans and their allies were able to reduce the inheritance tax (which was already far too low). And they accomplished this simply by renaming the inheritance tax the: Death Tax (cue an ominous echo…).

The term, “Death Tax” was, of course, incorrect. It implied that the dead person was being taxed when, actually and honestly, it was those who were being left a fortune who were being taxed. What we on the left should have done back then was to rephrase the term to our own advantage by calling it something like ‘the snobby little lazy shit’s tax.’ Or as others have suggested, ‘the Paris Hilton tax.’ Or, at the least, the ‘incredibly fair tax on unearned and undeserved wealth.’

The history of the Paris-Hilton-snobby-little-lazy-shit’s-incredibly-fair-tax-on-unearned-and-undeserved-wealth is an interesting one. Historically, it only kicks in on the super wealthy—the top one or two percent. Just before the Great Depression, it was lowered from 40% to 20%. In the 1930s, under FDRoosevelt, it was raised to 70% and its highest rate was at 77% during the 1970s. Today (beginning with amounts in excess of about 5 million dollars), it’s around 40%—nearly half the percentage that it was during the Republicans’ oft noted “Good Old Days.”

Now don’t go feeling too bad for those children of wealth who had to pay the 77%. The inheritance tax didn’t touch their trust funds or insurance benefits or their solid gold piggy banks, their Swiss or offshore bank accounts, their shadow corporations or any of the schemes their army of accountants could concoct. More, they were born with benefits that you and I can only imagine. They attended the best schools, wore the best clothing and jewelry, had the best medical care and were given the best family connections. Some of their graduation or wedding gifts alone could feed a small country. And never fear, if for some freakish spot of Karma they are driven (by limo) into poverty, they are eligible for (and demand) the same social welfare benefits that the rest of us need to rely on.

If you truly desire a for-profit economy that rewards innovation rather than rewarding birth, then you should support a high inheritance tax. But isn’t it interesting that the right-wingers who complain about poor people on public assistance are the same ones who want to reward the children of the wealthy for doing nothing other than sitting on their asses and having money thrown at them? Who has the real ‘entitlement’ attitude?

Let’s touch on another ominous result of inheritance—the laundering of money. Honoré de Balzac once noted: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Well, I won’t go that far (I dislike blanket statements), but only the most naïve can’t admit that many people made their wealth through illegal means (or, perhaps, means that should be illegal but are not because the wealthy typically make the laws). The wealthy robber barons, slum lords, sweatshop owners, gangsters, bribers, blackmailers, monopolizers, usurers, fraudsters, war criminals, market manipulators, sellers of snake oil, slave owners and a host of other despicable examples of humanity had their fortunes washed clean by their own deaths when their loot went to their children and their children’s children rather than back to its rightful owners (us!).

How much you think the rich stole their wealth from others pretty much determines where you fall on the political spectrum. Little or none? You’re probably a libertarian. Nearly all? You’re a socialist. I tend to be more aligned with Balzac’s thinking, blanketed or not. But even if very little wealth is actually stolen, shouldn’t any amount be too much? I mean, don’t conservatives often claim that we need to eliminate welfare for all poor people because they heard a story once about a well-dressed Black woman buying a Snickers Bar with food stamps?

One of the greatest, modern victories for the right wing was their rebranding of the Inheritance Tax into the Death Tax. It allowed them to trick poor and working people into demanding even more wealth for the super rich—and at their own expense. It shows how little the right wing cares for their preferred economic system, which is forever corrupted by those who gain wealth without having sweated a moment of their lives. And further, in the case of the legal laundering of loot, it shows how little they care for true justice and victims’ rights. It seems that nothing is certain but death, taxes and conservative hypocrisy.
Death, Taxes & Conservative Hypocrisy

Bob Maschi