tax cuts for the rich but none for the poor http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,893638,00.html
Please tax us, say (some) of America's richest Bill Gates Sr leads campaign against end of inheritance tax Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Wednesday February 12, 2003 The Guardian A group of some of the richest people in the United States are trying to persuade politicians to continue to tax the inherited fortunes of the wealthy, as the Bush administration acts to end inheritance tax. Their move comes as 10 Nobel Laureates and hundreds of economists took a full page ad in the New York Times yesterday to condemn President Bush's other tax plans. The battle over inheritance tax pits one group of the very wealthy, who believe that their money should be distributed widely, against another group who want to be able to pass all of their riches to their children. Spearheading the campaign for inheritance tax are Bill Gates Sr, father of the founder of Microsoft, and Chuck Collins, an heir to a meatpacking empire. "It is a classic man bites dog story, I suppose," said Mr Collins at a meeting in Santa Monica to promote their cause. Both men believe that the gap between the rich and the poor in the US is expanding dangerously and that the imbalance threatens social cohesion now that the top 1% of the country has more personal net worth than the bottom 95% combined. They have co-authored a book, Wealth and Our Commonwealth, which acts as their manifesto. At stake is the existing inheritance tax whose opponents have dubbed it "the death tax". The Bush administration favours repealing the law which has existed since 1916. This would reduce federal revenue by $850 billion over the following ten years, Mr Gates Sr and Mr Collins say, and would have an inevitable knock-on effect on social and educational services. In addition, they claim, charities would lose an estimated $6 billion a year as many contributions are currently made by people who know that the money would otherwise go to the US treasury. "We don't think the tax should be repealed," said Mr Collins, the co-founder of United for a Fair Economy and Responsible Wealth. He said that a powerful lobby, including the Gallo wine and Mars confectionery families, had created the name "death tax" to persuade people that many would be affected by the tax rather than just a tiny number of the very rich. "They have spun a whole mythology around the estate tax." "It is our country's most progressive tax," he said. "It's fiscally reckless to remove it and it is a tremendous incentive to give to charitable organisations." Mr Collins said that repealing the tax would lead to a greater disparity between the rich and poor. "What kind of country do we want to have? As John Paul Getty said, 'money is like manure - it's most effective when it's spread around widely'." Mr Collins said the inheritance tax affected only a very tiny percentage of those who died. Last year, 2.3 million people died in the US, of whom only 49,000 had a taxable estate and, of these, only 700 had businesses that would be affected by such a tax, he said. Bill Gates Sr, a former lawyer and the co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the campaign had become necessary because the vast disparity between rich and poor was "an unattractive feature of American life today". "Unfortunately, our politics has moved in a direction that means we have to revisit the reason for progressive taxation," he said. While there was "nothing wrong or bad about wealth", said Mr Gates, the fact that a rich lobby had been able to promote a repeal - effectively to cut their own taxes - "demonstrates so clearly the power of wealth. It's as simple as that. They don't want to pay it, and they virtually own the US Congress. Money and power are very closely related in this country and it's a very scary thing." The two men point to the growing disparity across the workforce; in 1980, a chief executive earned 42 times the pay of their workers, now it is 419 times as much. Mr Gates and Mr Collins have received backing from Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Ted Turner, George Soros and former President Jimmy Carter. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
