The wise members of Congress have determined that the estate tax will be 45% in 2009, 0% in 2010, and then 55/60% in 2011 and years after. Clearly, the best year to die is 2010. By dying in 2010 a rich person essentially doubles the amount of money his heirs wil receive.
I predict that there will be a mysterious increase in deaths among the very wealthy in 2010. If it's December 2010, and your rich mom is in a hospital bed with not much longer to live, won't some people take action to hasten the death to make sure it happens in December and thereby more than double the amount of money inherited?
If it's mid December 2009, and your dad dies, maybe you can somehow get everyone to pretend that the body is still alive so that the official date of death is 2010? Didn't anyone see the movie Weekend at Bernie's? I think that in the last week of the December there will be a lot of dead bodies out there that people are pretending are still alive.
Suicides will surely increase in 2010. If you're filthy rich, there's no higher act of love for your children than to kill yourself in 2010.
And of course, there is outright foul play. 2010 is the best year to murder your rich relative. I went to law school with a guy who was involved in a murder for inheritence scheme. He almost got away with it too.
I believe the proposed elimination of the "death tax" was going to be coupled with the transferability of basis after death. Right now if Grandpa dies he has to give $$$ to the gov't before you get it, but if you sell your inheritance immediately there's no capital gains. Under the proposed system, grandpa would give no $$$ to the gov't and when you sold your inheritence you'd have to pay capital gains on it for the difference between it's sale value and whatever grandpa bought it for. This system would actually be pretty fair if the capital gains were taxed at income levels.
Posted by: Russ | June 09, 2006 at 04:05 PM
The long term capital gains tax is 15%. Assuming that the estate's market value is twice its basis, we are talking about paying 7.5% tax at some future time instead of 55% immediately. Huge difference.
Posted by: Half Sigma | June 09, 2006 at 04:34 PM
Ha, The Economist pre-empted you. In an article on the estate tax, it states, "This mess clearly needs fixing, if only to avoid a surge in suspicious deaths in Palm Beach in 2010." http://economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SDPVJQT
Posted by: The Superfluous Man | June 09, 2006 at 07:14 PM