Tax - not so bad

Right. Inheritance and income are different animals, taxed at different rates.

Technically, inheritance tax is a taking of one's already-taxed accumulated income (= property), after one has passed.

That discourages people from saving for the next generation, which is something we are far better off encouraging, instead.

Cheers, James Arthur

Ya, that would be almost like giving the federal government power. LOL!

You're still making excuses for your illiteracy?

Precisely the problem. It would give congress the power to enrich friends and punish enemies. ...just like it does now. If you weren't so sarcastic, you might learn something.

Of course. It's never been proposed any other way, at least not by a major campaign in this country.

Sure, the Arabs won't import from Israel at all, so they ship through other countries.

True, but it doesn't have to be done anyway. Bitrex keeps inventing problems that aren't addressed by the current system either. Rent, to take one example, costs more in some places, but it's not deductible now. So his point is moot.

Right. I specifically said that Democrats could support that with a very large deduction and get the effect of a progressive system, but they don't want to loose the ability to wage class warfare.

Carnegie said the inheritance tax is ok, but the income tax is destructive.

I think his point is that wages tend to be higher in high rent addresses, so a progressive tax takes care of it. Of course it's nonsense but so is everything else out of a progressive's mouth.

Well, no one is stopping you. Send them some more, they will gladly take it off your hands.

I'm thinking about it. Local gov't $$ are much more useful to me than federal $$, and any extra money to the state is federally-deductable.

That doesn't make it a flat tax. It's a progressive tax with two tax brackets.

That's mathematically equivalent, but the justification is the same as the justification for a deduction, so we call it a personal deduction. That is also consistent for the deduction for each child, which has been proposed by Forbes and others to be much larger than it is now.