[Professor S]

My issue with this tax is not necessarily when it taxes liquid assets or paper/equity investments. If the investment/wealth can meet the demands of the tax without causing is to collapse, I don't think the tax is completely wrong on a financial level (morally it's reprehensible as it taxes the same wealth TWICE).

My issue is that it makes no differentiation between liquid assets and concrete/long term assets such as land/businesses/etc. These long term examples of hard assets disintegrate when we try and tax them at high levels, forcing them to be sold off in chunks, usually to people who can afford to buy them up and profit even more from them.

Real estate is a funny thing. In thirty years it can make average people very "paper" wealthy and therefore subject to abuses like the estate tax. What is going to happen to farms and generational property? Real estate has always been one of the few ways that middle class people could reasonably expect to create more wealth not just for themselves, but for their children and their children's children. It's also historically more stable than the stock market. Even with the real estate market the way it is, it still wasn;t as badly hit as the stock market and over 30 years Real Estate brings 6% a year in interest. Now in many cases this slowly built family wealth will be forced to be sold off to cover the tax.

So the middle class trying to grow their wealth are punished, and those that have wealth can afford the tax and even are given the opportunity to buy the afformentioned wealth from the middle class at rock bottom prices because the middle class is desperately trying to cover the cost of the inheritance tax.

Now add to this the fact that real estate companies and banks can no longer provide appraisal services (they must be froma third party), and you open up a huge opportunity for local governments to corrupt this entire process in an effort to get a new Target or Wal-Mart in the neighborhood. How much money would it take to get a third party appraiser to value a $2 million property at $3.5 million, and therefore subject to punitive estate taxes? $1,000? $2,000? Until you have dealt with a local government, you don't know what corruption is.

Oh, and Pres. Obama also wants to greatly reduce the charitable contribution deduction from the tax system, even though it will cripple many charities.

Once again, these policies are not about fairness or equitable distribution of wealth, they are about POWER. The policies currently being proposed don't encourage the natural growth of wealth in the midle of lower classes, because to allow that would be to give the people the power and not the government. The government wants to dole out our money as they see fit. The government doesn't want to encourage private charitable contributions, because they can't make the decision of who gets the money.

Are we starting to get it yet?