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2009. The rate will drop to 45 percent in 2007. In 2010, for just one year, the tax will go away. Then, on Jan. 1, 2011, boom - it returns to its 2001 levels.
That, of course, is absurd, and raises gallows humor about sons and daughters murdering their elderly parents on the night of Dec. 31, 2010. The bill in the House Wednesday would have wiped out the tax from 2010 on.
Pomeroy, among many others, tried the common-sense approach of permanent reform. With a few adjustments, and with proper estate planning, the tax hurts very, very few businesses beyond what their owners can easily afford.
It's worth noting that even with the higher thresholds and the lower rates, the government would collect more than half of the $80 billion proceeds.
Deception offers some of the reasons for the opposition. But there's a murkier reason for opposition to the tax, one that author and activist Chuck Collins has examined.
"It also feeds on the mythology of individual achievement or individual success," said Collins, who is co-author, with William Gates Sr., of the book "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes."
"It's the `great man' theory of wealth creation," Collins said.
Hero worship is, indeed, crucial to the American ideology of conquering the frontier. And we all want to imagine it could be us someday. But as long as we need to raise money, does it really cut down the hero to tax his children when he dies?
Collins is co-founder of United for a Fair Economy, a Boston-based group advocating economic equity. One of the group's projects, Responsible Wealth, has conscripted 1,500 people who would be subject to the estate tax, but who do not want it abolished. They are doubly heroic for understanding that government has vast responsibilities, and that they are most able to pitch in.
Collins cites studies that show charitable donations would decline by $6 billion a year if the tax were abolished. Here in Greater Hartford, philanthropist and industrialist Harry Gray - an opponent of the tax - said Thursday he would not give away less if the tax did not exist. I believe him, and the broad point is debatable.
Gray and other opponents, including Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, who voted to abolish the tax, but not reform it, say it amounts to an unfair double taxation. Among people such as Gray who are affected by the tax, that's an understandable argument, although I disagree.
For Simmons and his constituents in the less affluent eastern half of Connecticut, the fairness argument is hard to fathom. The only conclusion is that they have a misguided hatred of government, a hatred they are using to hurt their own economic cause.
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