President Trump Lied.
Yesterday, September 27, 2017, President Trump said, “To protect millions of small businesses and the American farmer, we are finally ending the crushing, the horrible, the unfair estate tax, or as it is often referred to, the death tax.”
President Trump lied to the American People. Again.
The idea that millions of small businesses and farms are affected by the estate tax is ridiculous. For a married couple, the first $11,000,000 is exempt from estate tax. That leaves only about 5,500 out of almost 3 million estates would have to pay any taxes in 2017, under the current law. Half of those would pay only an average of 9 percent. Only 80 estates, less than 3 thousandths of one percent of the estates, are farms and small businesses.
Never mind that abolishing the estate tax would be worth billions of dollars to President Trump’s family and affects nobody but multimillionaires and billionaires. The estate tax is “crushing, horrible, and unfair.”
In 1977, 139,000 estates had to pay the tax. In 2000, it was 52,000. Today, it’s down to 5,500, a 97% drop since 1977. Congress has kept raising the exemption and lowering the tax rate, so for almost all Americans, even farms and small businesses, the estate tax is just not a problem.
If you’re not worth more than ten million dollars, “the crushing, the horrible, the unfair estate tax” does not apply to you. You’re too poor.
It’s just a coincidence that President Trump’s family stands to make billions of dollars by abolishing the estate tax, while the vast majority of U.S. citizens would instead see their taxes rise to cover this tax break for billionaires.
Again by coincidence, there are plenty of other millionaires and billionaires in the White House who stand to make millions or billions by eliminating the estate tax, including Gary Cohn, Betsy DeVos, Steve Mnuchin, Rex Tillerson, Jared Kushner, and Wilbur Ross.
Let me re-iterate. While abolishing “the crushing, the horrible, the unfair estate tax” would make billions of dollars for the family of President Trump and the families of many of his staff, the real reason they want to get rid of it is so 80 farms and small businesses (out of 3 million estates annually) won’t have to pay estate taxes.
Side note: It’s ironic that President Trump made this claim yesterday in Indianapolis. Last year he promised Indiana residents there was a “100 percent chance” he would save the jobs at Carrier, the heating and air-conditioning manufacturer. Then Carrier started layoffs in July, moving the manufacturing from Indianapolis to Monterrey, Mexico.
