Demanding a federal budget that is fair, responsible, and meets our nation's priorities

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Offensive Op-ed in Today's Hill on the Estate Tax

The Hill is running a terribly misinformed op-ed today on the estate tax. The op-ed, which actually calls the victims of the estate tax "real and tragic" in the first paragraph, only gets worse from there. (I personally would not call the situation of any multimillionaire "tragic," but some people like to put a little flair in their writing).

One of the biggest myths perpetuated in this column is the author's assertion that "the estate tax does not even generate much income for the federal government." Estate tax repeal would actually result in a $1 trillion revenue loss for the federal government over a ten-year period. During a time when the government is struggling to shave a couple hundred billion off the budget deficit, it seems like an additional trillion dollar hit would hurt. A lot.

The author of this article, Barbara Kasoff, is the President of an organization called Women Impacting Public Policy. The group claims to be advocates "for and on behalf of women and minorities in business," but really is far more interested in promoting radically conservative economic policies, such as full repeal of the estate tax. It is no coincidence that one of the group's founding members, Pat Soldano, is an extremely wealthy estate planner as well as the President and owner of the Policy and Taxation Group which advocates for the full repeal of the estate tax through lobbying legislators and executive branch officials.

Soldano is profiled in the recent Public Citizen/United for a Fair Economy report on the estate tax. The report names her as "the lobbyist who has represented at least seven of the [extremely wealthy and powerful anti-tax] families, played a central role in the formation of a massive anti-estate tax alliance — the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition — that has served as the main coordinator of the repeal campaign." More information on Soldano and WIPP is available in the report on page 15.

For a much more comprehensive, fair, and balanced article on the estate tax, check out this article which appeared today in KnoxNews. Also see the latest Watcher article on the estate tax.