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Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

For societal equality 2 things I feel are really important are;

1) Death taxes. This limits dynastic wealth if a decent % is being taken back every generation. And it creates a desire to make opportunity for the next generation as it's not so easy to buy this directly. Assuming there is a minimum threshold so people don't lose their family home this should be looked at quite positively. You can see it as deferred taxation obligations. Given the government needs a certain amount, I'd much prefer to pay less tax while living if I can delay contributions til death.

2) Keeping necessities in life equal access. As soon as the elite can segregate them-self from public systems like schools and hospitals the desire to fund and ensure top service levels across these for the masses goes down. If people making the funding decisions have to use the same schools, hospitals, pensions, roads etc as the rest of the masses they will ensure these are funded and functioning well.

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The problem with (1) is that a large amount of inheritance taxes are taxes on illiquid assets. So if you inherit a $10M business, the only way to pay your tax bill is to liquidate the business. Needless to say, it's bad for society if a business is shut down simply due to the death of a founder.

The way to resolve (1) is if the IRS allows you to pay taxes on in-kind receipts with in-kind payments. I.e., if you get a business that the IRS claims is worth $10M, and you owe $3M in taxes on it, you can pay your tax bill by handing the IRS $3M worth of shares.

(This would also fix a major problem that startup employees have, namely that if they quit their job, they need to exercise options and incur a huge tax bill. But they can't actually sell the shares to get money to pay the taxes. Not a problem if they can give the IRS some of their shares.)

> inheritance taxes are taxes on illiquid assets

This is why estate planning exists. Any business that actually plans for estate taxes will not have this problem at all.

They have different problems - diverting investments into liquid cash to pay off tax bills. This is also bad, since rather than expanding a productive business cash is diverted to creating unnecessary liquidity.

There is also no "estate planning" for various other incidents of the same issue, e.g. employees cashing out stock options.

> diverting investments into liquid cash to pay off tax bills. This is also bad, since rather than expanding a productive business cash is diverted to creating unnecessary liquidity.

By that argument, all taxation is bad because it diverts funds from other purposes. Yet we must pay for government services. Government is an investment; what you are saying, in effect, is that there are opportunity costs to the investment - a truth of every investment.

Not all taxation is bad by this argument. Only demanding liquidity for taxes on illiquid transfers is.

If the government took 30% of the shares of the company in lieu of the same amount in cash, the issue would be completely resolved. There would be no reason not to invest in the business - the government takes 30% (or whatever the rate is) of shares regardless.

The problem is that turning illiquid assets into cash costs extra money.

> "So if you inherit a $10M business, the only way to pay > your tax bill is to liquidate the business..."

False.

Any business in good financial condition can obtain loans easily, especially in the current economy.

And why would the need to "liquidate the business" be bad? The seller still gets the value of the business plus the flexibility of investing that value forward.

This is a myth, perpetrated by the campaign against the estate tax. See my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9993417

> if you inherit a $10M business, the only way to pay your tax bill is to liquidate the business.

I've never heard of a business being liquidated to pay estate taxes, and I've heard of many businesses being passed from generation to generation. For one thing, doesn't this valuable business have revenues?

According to the CBO, about 5% of estates have liquidity problems.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/07-06-estatetax.pdf

See also these survey results, which suggest estate taxes limit business growth and shrink businesses: http://coles.kennesaw.edu/centers/cox-family-enterprise/cox-...

This probably underestimates the nature of the issue, since as noted, a business with an aging owner will engage in estate planning and will liquidate sufficiently over time as to not enter the 5%. This, in turn, diverts cash from investment into unnecessary liquidity.

Note also that this isn't an anti-estate tax argument. This is an argument against demanding cash tax payments for in-kind transfers. It applies to more than just estates, e.g. startup employees exercising their options, and does not apply to estates which are comprised of highly liquid assets (cash, SPY). There is no need to spout pro-taxation talking points, I'm discussing a technical detail of payment methods.

Of course paying estate taxes limits growth. So does paying any tax, haha, this is why companies actively avoid them when they can.

I thought it was interesting where the survey referenced 'paying off taxes will involve selling all/part of the business". This was around 40% positive across the categories. While firstly I'd take results with a pinch of salt as the people answering likely have an agenda to push, and a survey is not always reality. But having to sell some of a business is not a bad thing from a community POV. It keeps capital circulating in an economy. This offsets one on the main weaknesses of capitalism, that capital keeps concentrating. This conversation is about an equal society, so in that context I feel this is a good result, stopping people forever accumulating assets without having to release them. Hence it would be an easy argument liquidity problems from estate taxes could be a good thing for ensuring an equal society.

Interestingly, "death tax" was a term of propoganda created for the organized campaign against the estate tax.

The story is told in the article below; it's worth a few bucks. It will change how you look at politics forever. Probably, like almost all Americans, you have no idea how carefully planned many of the political arguments everyone repeats [EDIT: as everyday conversation] are, and by just a few people:

http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19132

Maybe to my point we should rebrand it as 'deferred tax obligations'.

Could even even give people the option to pay (for easy example) 2% estate tax yearly while alive or 30% at death type deal. I bet most would happily take the 'deferred tax' option.

Surely you could provide a reference not behind a paywall?

Although I understand your argument, I don’t think” 1) death taxes “ or 2) “Keeping necessities in life equal access” actually help maintain societal equality

re: death taxes, Tyler Cowen writes in the WSJ, “ It isn't clear that the estate tax raises much, if any, revenue. The very rich engage in tax-avoidance strategies. The apparent revenue raised is often offset by a lower intake from income and capital gains taxes. Furthermore, it has been estimated that the costs of implementing tax-avoidance strategies are roughly equal to the (gross) revenue raise.” But, even if this premise is not true (that there’d a positive net difference in the revenue raised), that’s assuming that the rich will maintain the same level of spending before they die, which may not be the case if they will get taxed on it when they die. In other words, the rich would have a greater incentive to spend it while they are alive, which merely increases consumption inequality.

re: Keeping necessities in life equal access. I agree on that point. But, I think it’s very difficult to achieve because of the complex factors that differentiate people in society. For example, in a given National Blue Ribbon School, there’s mix of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds that theoretically have equal access to educational resources the school provides. But, in practice, the educational resources that the school does not provide (at-home support, extended social networks, etc.) will be heavily correlated with a higher socioeconomic background.

> Tyler Cowen writes in the WSJ, “ It isn't clear that the estate tax raises much, if any, revenue. The very rich engage in tax-avoidance strategies. The apparent revenue raised is often offset by a lower intake from income and capital gains taxes. Furthermore, it has been estimated that the costs of implementing tax-avoidance strategies are roughly equal to the (gross) revenue raise.”

Cowen is merely repeating the talking points of the propaganda campaign against the estate tax planned in the mid-90s:

  Yet in order to win over a specific audience to the issue,
  conservative discourse began to shift toward another frame,[1]
  as can be seen in important reports on the estate tax written by
  conservative analyst Bill Beach. Beach had been specifically
  brought to the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative
  think tank, thanks to funds raised by Alabama estate planner
  Harold Apolinsky, who formed the American Family Business
  Institute (AFBI) in 1992 to lobby against the estate tax. ...

  In a 1996 backgrounder ... [Beach] offered three main
  arguments for repeal: the estate tax is a diminishing source of
  revenue; it fails to achieve its purported goals of wealth
  redistribution; and the tax does more harm than good in lost
  productivity, lost jobs, and decreased revenue through other
  taxation.[2]

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Beach was also the source of the myth that small businesses and family farms were suffering from the tax, and the same campaign carefully developed the term 'death tax', which they credit with much of their success. Also, as mentioned elsewhere, the cited article will change forever how you read political commentary on any issue, as you realize that much of it, including by unwitting lay people, is parroting propaganda developed by special interests.

> ... even if this premise is not true (that there’d a positive net difference in the revenue raised), that’s assuming that the rich will maintain the same level of spending before they die, which may not be the case if they will get taxed on it when they die.

This seems very speculative. I've heard so many arguments with a similar argument: 'don't tax the wealthy or they will do X'. For example, the Reagan administration and others at the time argued that reducing taxes on the wealthy would increase their productive use of the funds, causing wealth to 'trickle down' to everyone else. As it turned out, cutting taxes on the wealthy (and thereby relatively increasing the burden on everyone else) made the wealthy wealthier (surprise!), and everyone else's income has been stagnent since then. The wealthy need to do their fair share and make the same sacrifice as everyone else; they are not a special case.

----

[1] "frame", as in a way to 'frame' an issue or debate

[2] "Death and Taxes: Issue Framing and Conservative Coalition Maintenance" by Richard Meagher: https://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19132

Re: “Cowen is merely repeating the talking points of the propaganda campaign against the estate tax planned in the mid-90s…” Cowen’s argument is not the same.

1) Cowen is saying that the rich engage in tax avoidance. While, in the article Meagher is describing “how and why the estate tax became part of the pro-family agenda of social conservatives.”

(There’s a ton of data on it: see “Tax Avoidance Saves Wealthiest Americans $3 Trillion Each Year” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/tax-avoidance_n_242...)

2) re: “This seems very speculative.” The point that I’m making is about the time value of money. (I’m not making a Reaganomics supply side argument.) My point is, a dollar before a death tax is worth a lot more than after the death tax --- there’s enormous evidence for that (and even without a death tax based on time value decay alone it is true.) Admittedly, I am assuming that rich people would rather not voluntarily give money to the government, even if they don’t want to give it to their heirs. (ie. The Giving Pledge the super rich make to philanthropy.)

> Cowen’s argument is not the same. ... Cowen is saying that the rich engage in tax avoidance. While, in the article Meagher is describing “how and why the estate tax became part of the pro-family agenda of social conservatives.”

I'm a bit confused by this. In the quote I included, Meagher describes the talking points planned by Beach as including "decreased revenue through other taxation", which is what Cowen claims happens due to tax avoidance. I'm not sure why you refer to a sentence from a summary of Meagher's article (though I realize the article is behind a paywall, sorry), which I didn't mention and doesn't seem to apply.

> I’m not making a Reaganomics supply side argument.

I didn't mean to say you were, sorry. I meant, like those Reagonomics arguments, it's yet another speculative reason why the wealthy shouldn't pay their share of taxes. But regarding its speculative nature you say that ...

> there’s enormous evidence for that

I believe there is an enormous number of arguments behind it, but given the organized propaganda campaign and the fact that this point matches one of its talking points, I'd have to judge the evidence for myself. It's not reasonable to expect you to do research and provide it for the sake of a HN discussion, but if you could happen to recommend any I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

> death tax

As I mention elsewhere, this term for the estate tax, it's proper name, was a major, carefully implemented part of that same propaganda campaign.

On 1) there's been a ton of research on intergenerational social mobility, and it plays such a gigantic role that inheritance of capital has become inheritance of socioeconomic status and all that it entails.

And it's becoming a bit insane. Anyway it's not a death tax and I think it makes sense not to use the term too much. You die, your don't get taxed, you're dead. If you had no heirs, there'd be no taxation to be done because well hey you're dead. The taxation comes from inheritance. Calling it a death tax feels like screwing over old, vulnerable and well, dead people. But inheritance of even $100 is this money you never worked for, that you somehow deserve to have because someone related by blood just died. And if it's $100k I don't care much. But above that, it's insane to just get all this money you never worked for. I mean we don't do that for anything else, do we? We don't say 'oh your father was from a powerful family, he just died so here's 1 ticket to the best private school, 1 ticket to have people build you a house, 1 ticket to have doctors treat you for the rest of your life for free, 1 ticket to get all these fancy jobs' etc. It'd be pure nepotism. Yet when instead of a ticket, it's a bag of a ridiculous amount of money (say a few million), that can buy the equivalent of all those tickets, it's completely fine. And talking about a tax on that, so that if you inherit $100k you keep it all, but if you inherit $2m you only keep $500k (yeah, pretty aggressive), makes total sense to me. I mean that $500k is still a mind boggling advantage over those without it, you're basically carefree and set up until you're past 30 without any financial issues and any education you want, and the ability to take measured risks.

I guess to some extent it's a self-reproducing issue. In an unequal society, if I had $10m, I'd want my kid to have it. In an equal society, I'd want my kid to have $50k and do his very best. Like here in the Netherlands I couldn't care less if my kid didn't inherit a whole bunch of money, university is essentially free, as is healthcare, subsidies exist for housing, if you work hard and have parents to guide you, money isn't a top factor (although it plays a role, always). But in the states I'd be really concerned for my kids as a poor parent, and if I happened to be rich and about to die, I'd really want to leave them wealth because it plays such a big role in social mobility.

> But above that, it's insane to just get all this money you never worked for.

It's the person who worked hard for it who's giving it to his heirs. It's not money falling from the sky.

So what, it doesn't change a thing. The person dies, now other people, not him, receive money that they did not work for, in the order of millions, which completely changes equal the rules of an equal opportunity system, transfers social mobility without merit, advantages a person over everyone else based on luck, not merit, and creates huge inequalities that are again, not based in merit. It's the opposite of the American dream, that social mobility is gained by working hard, instead it happens to be mostly inherited and those unequal inheritances create barriers for everyone else's social mobility.

That's why it ought to be limited more than it is now.

For example, the estate tax in 2001 was less than $700k exempted, above that you paid 55%. So you could get more than half a million tax free, and if you got say 5 million more, you'd keep another 2.5 million. It's still a gigantic advantage over everyone else to inherit $675k tax free, and half of anything above that. (I inherited money myself, and it's ludicrous).

By 2008 the figure shot up to $2m exempt from taxes, and the tax rate above that dropped to 45%.

And then a weird thing happened, it went to $5m by 2011 and the rate dropped further, to 35%. Today it's beyond even that, and it's starting to get insane.

Now look at what that means. Imagine inheriting $5m and putting it towards stocks, which have a long term average ROI of 7%, already inflation adjusted. You'd get an annual salary of $350k, taxed low by the way because top capital gains tax rates are much lower than top tax rates on labor.

Imagine 'receiving' a ticket for a lifetime (inflation-adjusting & compounding) $350k income-per-year like that from someone else who actually worked for it (or guess what, inherited it himself), would you ever have to work? Would you have a difficult time increasing that money while spending $100k on yourself per year, without working? Would you be able to give away more money at the end of your life than you received, without ever working? Would receiving this financial claim over other people's future work (a definition of money) based on blood right be akin to medieval nepotism? Would this create a system not just with unequal outcomes, but with inequality by design? The answer to all these questions is yes.

Which is why it's time to consider reforming estate tax. I'm sympathetic to receiving and giving part of your wealth to others without the government stepping in. And we can keep that to large amounts, like say $100k. But there have to be limits, and the limit of $5.5m and just a 40% tax above that like we have today, is way too high.

> Imagine 'receiving' a ticket for a lifetime (inflation-adjusting & compounding) $350k income-per-year like that from someone else who actually worked for it (or guess what, inherited it himself), would you ever have to work?

Don't folks of your politics normally argue that with a basic income people would still work?

> Would this create a system not just with unequal outcomes, but with inequality by design?

Nature is unequal by design. Unless you're arguing for some Harrison Bergeron-type future where we scar attractive people and literally cut tall people off at the knees, there's nothing you can do about it. What you're proposing is the financial equivalent.

> And we can keep that to large amounts, like say $100k.

$100,000 is not a large amount: it's 1-5 years' salary (or less!).

> But there have to be limits

Why?

> Assuming there is a minimum threshold so people don't lose their family home t

There is no minimum that satisfies both. What's a house cost in San Francisco or LA now anyway?

If we set it too low, people lose family homes/farms, if we set it too high the rabble-rousers bitch. There's no value that works.

>Keeping necessities in life equal access. As soon as the elite can segregate them-self from public systems like schools

I'm not sacrificing my children to the public school system. Sorry.

>If we set it too low, people lose family homes/farms, if we set it too high the rabble-rousers bitch. There's no value that works.

People losing their family homes and farms is what should happen in a meritocratic society. Intergenerational wealth transfer is by its very nature antithetical to meritocracy.

The irony is that for many people laboring under a very unmeritocratic society, its the one sliver of wealth which keeps them afloat. Ergo they can be relied upon to support it.

Sorry to see you voted down. Though I disagree, I think these are good points.

> If we set it too low, people lose family homes/farms, if we set it too high the rabble-rousers bitch. There's no value that works.

This is true of any issue; there always are people who disagree and yet somehow, through the democratic political process, we've been passing laws and establishing policy for 239 years. Politics sucks, but it works. Even Iran and the U.S. can find agreement.

> I'm not sacrificing my children to the public school system. Sorry.

I think this is perfectly valid and responsible. It's not your kids fault, and they'll be better prepared to contribute to the community with a better education.

But if you don't support the public schools otherwise (e.g., through taxes and political support), you are sacrificing your kids. They will live in a world filled with many more uneducated, unskilled people. These people will vote, will be your kids co-workers (or employees or talent pool), will be your kids' customers, etc. And your kids will lose the benefits of all the brilliant things that could have been done with all that wasted talent.

Which is why many suggest that congress should only get health care through medicare.

> As soon as the elite can segregate them-self from public systems like schools and hospitals

Ehh, I mostly agree with your first point but I think it's kind of a pipe dream to think it could be otherwise. Go visit a public school in a place like Greenwich, CT and then go visit a public school in the Bronx. Both technically public schools, but students have a clear advantage in one vs the other.

Sure, Bill Gates's kids aren't going to public school probably even in Greenwich. Still, let's not pretend that the elite only go to private schools, or that they wouldn't congregate in wealthy areas to make public schools essentially private.

Inequalities will always exist as long as people can use their assets to gain advantages for themselves/their families, and trying to force it otherwise against an unwilling populace is likely to just exacerbate the problem in other ways (see: Suburban flight).

Both technically public schools, but students have a clear advantage in one vs the other.

Funding schools through property taxes is an easy explanation for that one. There are other factors, of course, but are there any other industrialized nations where public funding of education is directly tied to parental wealth?

The US is not homogeneous in that regard. Many states give more funding to schools in poor towns than rich towns, for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district in NJ. Hasn't had a measurable impact on reducing the performance disparity.

The real problems, whatever they are, run much deeper than local funding of schools. Focusing on funding is a red herring.

Yep. The problem with schools in poor neighborhoods is the students have to go to school with other poor kids. If money were the problem, D.C. public schools would be the best in the nation.

> Focusing on funding is a red herring.

I'm not sure it's a red herring. It may be necessary, but not sufficient.

> Funding schools through property taxes is an easy explanation for that one

Though if it wasn't for that it would be through a local school levy, or a fundraiser, or any number of other seemingly harmless methods of transferring money from parents to the school.

Even dumb ideas off the top of my head like "Wealthy parent A purchases 300 textbooks and donates them to the school so the school can spend that money on higher salaries for teachers" are probably legal ways for wealthy parents to supplement their local school.

Like a wise princess once said, "The more you tighten your grip, the more [wealthy parents] will slip through your fingers."

There was a statewide measure in Colorado in the last election that would (somewhat) equalize funding across school districts, taking money from rich areas and giving more to poor areas (meaning more than they get under the current system, not more money in aggregate).

This is, IMO, a very progressive idea, and I totally expected it to fail. What I didn't expect was how badly it failed in the one of the most progressive/liberal towns in the state: Boulder.

It seems that, while the people in Boulder talk about helping others, when it comes to potentially reducing the (granted, excellent) quality of the schools in their own back yard, they vote selfishly along with the rest.

Sad.

I don't think the problem is the government funding per se but the government operation, and the tying of attendance rights to location of residence. You could have a much better system while keeping government funding: "money follows the student". That is, you can send your kid to any school meeting the government's criteria, and that gets your subsidy.

Why won't we switch to that? Well, most homes owe a significant portion of their value to "being in a good school district" and most such homeowners have made a leveraged bet of most of their net worth in that home. Such reform would mean destroying that.

It would also mean schools trying to apply the same resegregation filters most parents want, at which point governments would have to adapt their criteria to stop that, and the arms races continues.

> As soon as the elite can segregate them-self from public systems like schools and hospitals

And military front lines. The US has had a system to allow the children of the rich to avoid the military during wars since World War II - the student 2-S draft deferment to the end of conscription altogether in the early 1970s. This goes back in US history - the US Civil War is where the phrase "rich man's war, poor man's fight" comes from.

> This goes back in US history - the US Civil War is where the phrase "rich man's war, poor man's fight" comes from.

Rich Yankees, yes: a rich Northerner would pay a poor man to take his place in the draft. A rich Southerner would outfit his own regiment and lead it in defense of his home.

Does one need an estate tax if there's either a tax on wealth or a land value tax?

Keep in mind any tax on non-liquid assets that don't generate a lot of free cash flow can be very burdensome to those who control those assets. I believe this is why some states have moved away from death taxes....family farms were being sold off to pay taxes from the previous generation.

There's no evidence of this ever happening.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/3/the-estate-tax-...

That was the "Joe the Plumber"/"CRA caused the financial crisis" story of estate tax.

An interesting but related point about the power of propaganda:

The family farms story is a myth created (or maybe first given authority) by Bill Beach at the Heritage Foundation around 1996. It was part his plan for the rhetoric and talking points of an assault on the estate tax.[1]

  repeal proponents are still unable to produce a single,
  verifiable example of a farm or business closing due to
  the burden of estate tax payments. [as of 2013]

It's amazing to think that one person can sit down in a room and plan terminology and a story like that, and here we are almost 20 years later and people blithely repeat it. It's a bit scary too. The term "death tax" was part of the same planning, though I'm not sure it was Beach's idea.

I highly recommend the article below, which will change how you look at politics forever:

[1] http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19132

"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"

Actually I had never heard of this made as a political argument before. It was a family friend who had to sell off assets in a small manufacturing business to pay off the taxes due on their inheritance. So yeah, it happens.

About inheritance taxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwUaVDIPXg

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