We're Going to Let Paris Hilton Get Out Of Paying Taxes?

I wanted to highlight Sebastian Mallaby's excellent op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post about the ridiculous estate tax repeal that may be close to passage. Republicans have been most adept at getting their corporate conservative agenda through Congress, like the heinous bankruptcy bill last year. Repealing the estate tax, already in a temporary suspension, has already passed the House, and there are rumors of a compromise in the Senate among Democratic ranking member of the Finance Committee Max Baucus and others. Mallaby comes out with very direct language and explains why this whole thing is a sham:

It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax.

The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits. Thanks to the baby bust and medical inflation, spending is projected to rise by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, a growth equivalent to the doubling of today's Medicare program. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take a source of revenue and abolish it outright.

The nation faces rising inequality. Since 1980 the gap between the earnings of the top fifth and the bottom fifth has jumped by almost 50 percent. The United States is by some measures the most unequal society in the rich world and the most unequal that it's been since the 1920s. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Identify the most progressive federal tax and repeal it.

The nation faces the prospect that inequality will damage meritocracy. When the distance between top and bottom widens, it becomes harder to traverse the gap; people of low birth are stuck at the bottom, and human talent is wasted. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take the tax that limits what the super-rich pass on to their children and get rid of it. Send a message to hereditary elites: Go ahead, entrench yourselves!

The idea that this is "double-taxation" is ludicrous. This is income to inheritors. Why should they expect income from a job to be taxed but not income gained in an inheritance? For anyone affected by the Estate Tax, this income is likely to be their sole source of income, too (or at least the only one they need). Trust fund babies contribute nothing to the economy, live off the wealth and ingenuity of their forbears, and we don't want them to pay their fair share to keep America strong?

The estate tax exists to buffet permanently retrenched wealth in this country. It doesn't wipe it out, it doesn't bankrupt anybody. There is not a single circumstance of a family farm being wiped out by the estate tax. Not one. During Hurricane Katrina, Senators actually casted around for dead people whose families might be hurt by the tax. That's disgusting. The entire campaign to repeal this tax has been bankrolled by 18 families. 18 families in the whole country. I guess that's a step up from the legislation last year that only affected one family, the Schiavo family. Congress is widening their focus!

For two seconds, I'd like every committed anti-tax conservative to think about whether or not any of those 18 families have ever thought about their taxes. Do you think they sit around in their mansions worrying about the Earned Income Tax Credit? Do you think they even know you exist? Then why are we so concerned with saving them tens of millions of dollars?

I'll be calling my Senators over and over about this affront. Do the same.