Farmers Watch Estate Tax Deadline

By Bill Teeter
This column was published in the Waco Tribune-Herald on Sunday, October 17, 2010

Farmers are growing apprehensive as New Year’s Day aproaches. At midnight on Jan. 1, 2011, a 10-year-old suspension of 2001 federal estate tax rules runs out.

Congress is discussing its options on the estate tax, which include a new tax with an increased exemption and lower percentage rate.

Farmers hope legislators find an answer that will either eliminate or hold down the estate tax before the deadline.

Family farms are at ground zero of the debate, farmers and others involved in agriculture said. Such farms would be greatly affected in the inheritance process after the death of an owner who has willed the property to descendants or others, they contend.

Farms often have values in the multi-millions and descendants would be forced to sell all or part of the property to take care of the estate tax bill, said Steve Pringle, legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau.

“You are left in the position of having to sell assets to pay the government the tax that’s due,” Pringle said.

Tax law passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 provided for a number of significant tax cuts and decreased estate taxes for large estates until the estate tax was repealed for 2010.

Affecting other cuts

The other tax cuts, including reductions for households making less than $250,000 a year, also were enacted under Bush and will expire at year’s end without action by Congress.

If Congress does not act before the Jan. 1 deadline, the estate tax will return to its 2001 status, with an exemption for all estates valued at $1 million or less and a 55 percent tax rate for all value above that, Pringle said.

Congress is looking at options that include an amendment to tax legislation that would allow for an exemption up to $3.5 million of value and a 45 percent tax rate for value above that. Over 10 years, the exemption would gradually increase to $5 million and the tax rate would drop to 35 percent.

Congress will resume legislative work Nov. 15. U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, has been trying to reduce the estate tax impact, said Josh Taylor, an Edwards aide.

A written statement from Edwards’ office this week said the congressman has backed permanent repeal of the estate tax, as well as exclusions for family farms and businesses with value of as much as $10 million.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, opposes any estate tax, said Cornyn spokesman Charles Chamberlayne.

Cornyn could still vote in favor of an estate tax that had bipartisan support and minimized the impact on farms and businesses, Chamberlayne said.

Closer to home, Justin Young co-owns an eastern McLennan County farm with his father, Paul Young. Farmers pay taxes on farm income produced by the land and to tax it upon an owner’s death is wrong, Justin Young said.

“It really needs to be completely done away with,” he said. “It’s not a good deal for farmers. We’re taxed on it and then we die and they turn around and tax us again.”

But support for high estate taxes, Pringle said, can be found among wealthy and low-income groups.

One organization, United for a Fair Economy, argues that steep taxes on inherited wealth is important for the economic health of the country.

Wealth is increasingly concentrated with a tiny percentage of individuals and estate taxes help combat that concentration, said Mazher Ali, the group’s communications director.

The Boston-based organization backs legislation calling for larger exemptions of $3.5 million for single people and $7 million for couples, with tax rates set on a sliding scale from [45] to 55 percent, he said.

Single people’s fortunes of more than $500 million and couples’ fortunes of more than $1 billion would be taxed at rates of 65 percent, Ali said.

The taxes are an investment that helps employees and entrepreneurs, Ali said. They help pay for administrative and physical infrastructure, such as the U.S. Patent Office and highways, so they ease the way for business, he said. [emphasis added]

The National Farmers Union backs estate taxes, but also wants them moderated from what existed in 2001.

The group hopes for a tax rate of 45 percent that increases on a sliding scale as value of the estate increases. The tax would have an exemption of $4 million for individuals and $8 million for couples.

Reducing the deficit

The Farmers Union statement said 1.6 percent of farms would have been affected by the pre-2010 version of the tax. The group contends that revenue from estate taxes would reduce the national deficit, cut the harmful effects of a weak economy and invest in future prosperity for the middle class.

Bill Reichenstein, a Baylor University professor of finance, said he doesn’t think estate taxes work well as government revenue sources.

Wealthy families often legally protect their money from estate tax collection through special trusts, Reichenstein said. The only ones making any money are attorneys who set up trusts, which typically cost around $30,000 to create, he said.

“What do we get for the estate tax? Is it really worthwhile when we’re getting next to nothing for it?” he said.

Justin Young’s father, Paul Young, put the worth of his farm at around $3 million. That means if nothing is done by Jan. 1 and it were passed on through an inheritance, taxes of more than $1 million would be placed on the estate.

Paul Young said he doesn’t believe the idea of redistributing wealth by such means works.

“If you took all the wealth in the country and divided it up evenly between everybody, it would just go back to where it is today,” he said.

In an atmosphere of 24/7 government-bashing and Tea Party cries of shrinking government, too seldom do we acknowledge the successes that we as a nation have accomplished when we take collective action, through our democratic process, to address great and pressing challenges.

As I sat down Sunday morning to read the Boston Globe, there on the front page was a powerful story about the success of the Clean Air Act. The article, entitled “A Clear Water Revival,” told the story of the Clean Air Act passed in 1989, and how it succeeded in dramatically reducing acid rain over the past 20 years since its passage.

In short, we saw a challenge, we took decisive action as one nation, and we turned a bad situation around! There's still more work to do, but it was a clear success. There was a great map on the front of the print edition of the Globe, but I couldn't find it online. I found a comparable map from the EPA which is copied below. It tracks "sulfate deposition" over time, one of the key measures of acid rainfall.

The Clean Air Act is one of the great examples of succesful collective action and government intervention, but it’s not the only one. A similar story has told about how we stopped the hole in the ozone from growing, through both national and international action.

Of course, the successes are not limited to environmental issues. Growing up in South Louisiana, I benefitted from many of the public structures that were created and funded through our tax dollars. One of the most direct reminders I had of this was when I was in college at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). The heart of the campus was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the New Deal job creation programs, with WPA plaques on every building to remind us of this fact.

When my wife and I got married 12 years ago, we did so in Norris Dam State Park, just north of Knoxville, Tennessee. The lodge we held our reception in, and all the cabins we rented for our visiting family, were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), yet another New Deal program that put Americans to work producing lasting public spaces and structures that are still with us today. We stayed in another CCC cabin for our honeymoon in the mountains of Virginia.

Of course, the list goes on with notable public successes like the GI Bill that helped returning veterans buy homes and attend college, the Social Security program that ended the devastating poverty many faced in their senior years, and public research that effectively ended debilitating diseases that once ravaged this nation. Though none of these programs are perfect, and some such as the GI Bill were tainted by the racial injustices of their time, they demonstrate the positive change we can make when we act collectively.

Amidst all these public responses, there has often been a role for market solutions, but that role should be kept in context. In the Boston Globe story, part of the success of the Clean Water Act was attributed to the cap and trade program that allowed market forces to find the most cost effective and efficient way to comply with the new standards. However, the standards and rules were still set through government action. Without that leadership and the high standards we as a people set, market forces would have had little incentive to solve the problem.

Despite all the hype about market solutions to public problems, and the cries for smaller government (coming from Tea Partiers and the like), we cannot afford to abdicate the role of a strong public sector when facing big problems. It is when we act collectively, through a democratic and accountable government, that we are best equipped to solve the big challenges of our time.

Black Unemployment Rate Slower to Recover

By Ann Belser
Originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 10, 2010

Photo h/t Pan-African News Wire via Flickr
Think it's hard to get a job?

Try being a young black man with an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle for a felony conviction. That's Brian Scott.

But Mr. Scott, 24, of the West End, has some things other young black men with a resume that includes a stint in the Allegheny County Jail don't: He has two suits for interviews, he wears a tie and he has the support of Leroy Hayes and Michael Rogers, co-coordinators of the Young Fathers Program at the Hill House Association in the Hill District.

The two men have taught Mr. Scott a truism he had not heard before: Clothes may not make the man, but they can unmake him.

In this Great Recession, black men have been hit particularly hard. On Friday when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the unemployment numbers for September, the overall population was suffering an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent.

Unemployment in the black community was 16.1 percent. And while unemployment for black women dropped from 13.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the rate for black men rose from 17.3 percent in August to 17.6 percent in September. There are now 1.4 million black men out of work nationally.

The numbers look even worse for black teenagers. While the overall teen population had an unemployment rate of 26 percent, the white teen population had 23.4 percent unemployment and black teens had 49 percent, up from 45.4 percent in August. Unemployment rates based on race are not broken out for the Pittsburgh region.

To call economic conditions in the African-American community a crisis is to understate the problem because the situation black men are finding themselves in could follow them for the rest of their careers.

"This high unemployment that blacks are facing is going to go on for years based on the current economic projections," said Algernon Austin, a sociologist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research center in Washington, D.C. "Blacks are going to have double digit unemployment until 2014."

Even as the recovery slowly takes hold, Mr. Austin said none of the projections call for unemployment among blacks to fall much below 10 percent. "It's a dire situation and unfortunately not many people are treating this as a crisis. ... Even college-educated blacks are facing high unemployment."

Some of the reasons for the intractable problems are a function of economics as much as they are the product of generations of discrimination.

For example, Mr. Austin said those living in a black community with high unemployment may have more problems finding new jobs because the people to whom they would naturally turn -- friends, families and neighbors -- are also experiencing high unemployment.

Black members of the middle class and upper middle class may also be hurt by a lack of depth of wealth. A study by United for a Fair Economy, a Boston-based research organization, showed that for every dollar of net worth that white families have, black families have 10 cents. [link and emphasis added]

Dedrick Muhammad, one of the authors of the report and a research associate for The Institute for Policy Studies, said a number of factors go into those numbers.

College-educated African Americans typically have higher levels of student loan debt because their parents don't have as much money to finance their educations; black homeowners in African-American neighborhoods have homes worth 10 percent to 15 percent less than comparable homes in white neighborhoods; and blacks at all levels of the income spectrum were targeted with subprime loans at a higher rate than whites.

"Any type of bump in the road can be really serious just because there is no wealth to back that up," Mr. Muhammad said. "Most people use their social network in times of crisis, but when your whole social network is in crisis, there's no ladder to climb out."

The recovery is also not helping blacks as much as whites. Whites tend to have more of their money in the stock market, which has regained some of its value, while blacks have more of their money in their homes, and the housing market has been slow to rebound. [...]

Read the full column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Stossel: If America is headed for bankruptcy, what can we do about it? Progressives say they have the answer: tax the rich – people like...me. And, joining us now from Boston is Mike Lapham, Director of...Responsible Wealth, an advocacy group that says, 'tax the rich more.' And, Mike, you include yourself?

Lapham: Indeed, indeed.

Stossel: You're rich?

Lapham: Well, my great, great grandfather founded a paper mill in upstate New York in about 1865, and, yeah, I'm doing alright.

Stossel: What do you mean by 'Responsible Wealth'? What's 'responsible'?

Lapham: Our members are people who are in the top 5% in terms of their wealth or income in the US. And, they are people who get that they don't need another tax break, that we should have an estate tax, that we need more corp. accountability, things like that.

Stossel: Alright, you don't think, though, that there is a risk that that will kill jobs? I think higher taxes make people work less. [...]

[video clip played]

Stossel: That's the risk...that more people will 'ride horses' instead of start businesses and create jobs.

Lapham: Well, that's the myth, anyway. That certainly sounds good, but the reality is – this has been proven over and over; United for a Fair Economy did a report on this a few years back – there is no real link between tax cuts and job growth. [...]

Watch the full interview on FoxBusiness.com

Read United for a Fair Economy's 2006 report,
Nothing to be Thankful For: Tax Cuts & the Deteriorating Job Market.

Meet the millionaire cofounder of Seventh Generation who is part of a growing movement of wealthy Americans urging Congress to let the Bush tax cuts expire.

Although Congress has decided to hold off on voting on the fate of the Bush-era tax cuts until after the November election, the delay has not slowed down the efforts of some wealthy millionaires. The 700 or so members of a Massachusetts-based group called the Responsible Wealth Project have spent the last several months courting politicians to make their case, arguing that the country simply cannot afford to keep tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and that, as billionaires and millionaires, they hardly need that cash. NEWSWEEK’s Nancy Cook recently spoke with one of the group’s members, the cofounder of Seventh Generation, Jeffrey Hollender. Hollender talked about his disdain for the current tax code, the need for more compassion among the wealthy, and the way being rich often seems relative.

Read the full interview on Newsweek.com

Photo h/t Business Innovation Factory via Flickr

Tax Me, Please

It’s not just billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates who say that there should be an estate tax, but just plain old rich folks are speaking out too.

More than 2,000 wealthy Americans who have paid or expect to owe estate taxes have signed a call to preserve the estate tax that was put out by United for a Fair Economy’s Responsible Wealth project. The signers include professors, farmers, small business owners, and lawyers, says Lee Farris, the estate tax policy coordinator for UFE. Some signers have a few million dollars, others tens of millions, but they are united in the words of the call: “We believe that permanent repeal of the estate tax would be bad for our democracy, our economy, and our society.”

The signers of the Responsible Wealth estate tax call are not just outliers, and some are billionaires. They include Forbes 400 members David E. Shaw, Julian Robertson, Jr., George Soros, John Sperling, and Ted Turner. All six children of David Rockefeller, the oldest Forbes 400 member, have signed too.

For more about how billionaires are duking it out over taxes, check out the story, Billionaire Tax Battle, that Janet Novack and I co-wrote in the October 25th issue of Forbes.

A consequence of the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax has lapsed for 2010, and it’s set to come back on Jan. 1, 2011, with a $1 million per person exemption and a top rate of 55%. In 2009, the exemption was $3.5 million per person and the top rate was 45%.

The Responsible Wealth groupies want to see an estate tax reinstated at 2009 levels, or with an even lower exemption and higher top rate. It’s unclear whether Congress will come to a decision on the estate tax in the lame duck session following the elections.

For the Responsible Wealth folks, the estate tax is only one tax fairness fight. They advocate progressive taxation at the state level. In what they see as their most urgent business recently, they have been calling on members of Congress with local business people in tow, arguing that the Bush tax cuts shouldn’t get extended.

I chatted with 82-year-old Edward Anderson, a retired managing partner of Tweedy Brown, who lives in San Diego and pegs his wealth in the low 8 figures. He remembers when the top federal income tax rate was 90%. “Now we’re told the world will come to an end [if taxes go up to 40%],” he says. Anderson is in favor of letting the Bush tax cuts expire (the top income tax rate would increase from 35% to 39.6%). And he has signed the Responsible Wealth call to preserve the estate tax, although an estate tax would mean less for his two sons and five grandkids at his death.

Anderson’s message to his peers is this: “It’s an amazing thing when people say, ‘You support the estate tax! Won’t that affect you?’ and the answer is ‘Yes and Yes.’ I don’t understand where people’s heads are. There’s a moral obligation of returning your wealth to society.”

To read the “call” (and sign it if you’re so inclined), click here.

How Billionaires Are Fighting Over Taxes
By Janet Novack & Ashlea Ebeling
This column appeared on Forbes.com, Oct. 7, 2010; printed Oct. 25, 2010

Has there ever been a time when so many Forbes 400 members have been involved in so many tax fights--on both sides? And not just in Washington, D.C., where epic battles rage over the future of the federal estate tax, income tax rates for the rich and whether the earnings of private equity and hedge fund managers should be taxed at 15% or 35%.

In Washington State, for example, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have given $100,000 each to defeat ballot initiative 1098, which would slap a 5% tax on income over $400,000 per couple and a 9% levy on income over $1 million. On the other side is the nation's richest man, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates--not surprising, since his dad is promoting the new tax, which would fund education, health care and other tax cuts. Gates Sr., 84, has given $500,000 to the 1098 campaign and even filmed a comic "soak the rich" ad for it, which ends with him dropped into a dunk tank.

Gates Sr. readily concedes he's in the minority among the highly affluent. "It's quite natural for people who are well-to-do to resist paying more taxes. In fact, it's quite natural for every person, everywhere, of whatever means, to resist paying more taxes," he says. "The interesting side," he adds, "is the number of people who are well-to-do who feel that this is something that should happen and that taxation should be progressive." (Washington State now relies on real estate and sales taxes, which hit the less wealthy harder.)

In California, too, The Forbes 400 vote is split. Rich lister and former eBay chief Meg Whitman is running for governor on a platform that includes killing the state's capital gains tax, now as high as 10.55%. That could save a bundle for those of her rich list backers who live in-state, including Scott Cook, Craig McCaw, Charles Munger, A. Jerrold Perenchio, Thomas Siebel and Jerry Yang. Yet California's richest man, Oracle Chief Larry Ellison, backs Democrat Jerry Brown, who supports the tax.

Then there's the epic battle over the future of the estate tax, which (thanks to the Bush tax cuts) is defunct for 2010 but comes roaring back in 2011. Some rich listers, including Charles and David Koch and the Mars family, have long bankrolled lobbyists and/or organizations advocating an end to the "death" tax.

Meanwhile, the list of rich folks openly supporting the tax has grown. Warren Buffett told Congress that a progressive estate tax is needed to keep the nation from moving "toward a plutocracy." Hedge fund billionaire Julian Robertson recently opined that the fairest way to get more deficit-closing revenue is "to tax the least deserving recipients of wealth, which are the inheritors." He and rich listers David Shaw, George Soros, John Sperling and Ted Turner have signed a "Responsible Wealth" project statement calling for the tax to be preserved. So have the six children of David Rockefeller, the oldest member of the 400. "If there weren't estate taxes, we might be in a position to inherit a great deal more, and I don't think any of us wishes that was the case," says daughter Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, a Tufts economist. "I recognize the danger of fortunes piling up and creating huge concentrations of wealth,'' she adds.  [emphasis & links added]

Splits among the rich on taxing the rich aren't new. "Some rich folks have always advocated positions against their own economic interests,'' says Clint Stretch, managing principal for tax policy at Deloitte Tax. In an 1889 essay Andrew Carnegie argued estate taxes are needed to prevent spoiled heirs and to put wealth to use for the common good.

Still, Gates Sr. says, the redistributionists (though a small minority) are more organized and seem more numerous than when the current estate tax debate got rolling in the mid-1990s. He notes, too, the recent campaign by his son and Warren Buffett to persuade other billionaires to pledge half their wealth to charity. "That's brand-new, to have a halfway-organized effort,'' he adds.

Then, too, tax battles are center stage these days, raising the profiles of participants and the temperature of the rhetoric on both sides. In August Blackstone Group Chairman Stephen Schwarzman had to issue an apology for comparing the Obama Administration's attempts to increase taxes on private-equity managers with "a war . . . like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."

Have the nation's dire fiscal situation, the current historically low tax rates on the rich and the growing concentration of wealth also influenced some rich folks? Perhaps.

Peter G. Peterson, another Blackstone billionaire, has been funding efforts to bring the federal deficit threat to the fore. Some liberal bloggers claim he's simply out to savage Social Security. But in a statement to FORBES Peterson said he believes tax hikes for the rich must be part of the solution, too. "Fortunate Americans like me have more than enough and should be willing to take on higher income tax rates, a progressive consumption tax and reduced benefits." He added that the "large and growing" disparity of wealth "threatens the basic ideals of fairness."

Then there's Tom Golisano, the billionaire founder of Paychex and antitax gadfly who ran for New York governor three times. After New York raised its top income tax rate last year, he moved his legal residence to income-tax-free Florida. He fought the tax assessment on his Mendon, N.Y. estate, won in court and last month held a seminar for 650 of his Rochester, N.Y.-area neighbors on how to challenge tax assessments.

Golisano doesn't think the estate tax is a good thing. "Philosophically, I don't believe in the concept of the estate tax. I call it the 'grave robbery tax,'" he says. Still, he seems weary of this particular war. "If we have to have it,'' he says, "I wish we'd come up with a set of rules and stay with it." He adds: "How do you do estate planning when you're constantly concerned about changing rules?"

Read this column on Forbes.com

As the tax policy debates come to a head in Congress, many folks want to know how the proposed changes will boil down to their bank accounts. A new tool created by the Tax Policy Center takes the debate out of abstraction and brings it into reality, allowing you to see how the numbers would play out for your household. 

Simply enter your information by family status (single, married, over 65, etc.) and your household income. You can use your actual information or borrow a pre-created hypothetical household situation. Either way, the calculator outlines what different families would pay if the current Bush-era tax cuts are all extended, extended only for families earning over $250,000, or all allowed to expire.

This will arm you with the information you need to jump in the ring and join the debate on tax policy. Look out, world!

Image by Phillip on Flickr.

In Slate last month, Timothy Noah discussed gaps. Not the "enthusiasm gap" among voters that the mainstream media has so enthusiastically wasted air time on, but something much more disconcerting.

But, while we're on the enthusiasm gap, let's sidebar. The American political system hasn't given us much to be enthusiastic about in recent years. While voting and other forms of democratic participation are critical to the future of our economy, we should also be considering what it's going to take to build a more engaged electorate. One answer is organizing. But, to build a base that's in it for the long haul, we'll need more education.

Noah wrote about the gap between what Americans think versus the reality of wealth inequality in the US. He recounts a time when the top 1% of American earners were taking home 18% of the nation's total income. That was in the early 20th century, and an insurrection of the working class seemed near. That figure has risen by 33% in the past eight decades, with the top 1% accounting for nearly a quarter of all US income, and we've not yet witnessed an uprising. On the contrary, many of us seem to be sleepwalking.

Noah cites a survey in which participants were asked to share their best guesses about wealth distribution across quintiles (fifths of the population) in the US. When surveyed about the holdings of the wealthiest quintile, participants on average undershot their estimates by 31 percent. (The top quintile accounts for 84% of all wealth in the US.)

U.S. Wealth Distribution: Actual vs. Estimated vs. Ideal

Source: Michael Norton and Dan Ariely, "Building A Better America–One Wealth Quintile At A Time" (pdf)

The outcomes of this study may offer a glimpse into why we've not yet seen that uprising: we're not fully aware of the severity of inequality in the US.

There is a silver lining here though – one that gives us hope for what could be. When asked to select an ideal wealth distribution among three options, 90% of respondents chose more equitable distributions (see below) than we have in the US today.

Wealth Distribution Preferences: US vs. Sweden vs. Equal

Source: Michael Norton and Dan Ariely, "Building A Better America–One Wealth Quintile At A Time" (pdf)

One part of UFE's mission is to raise awareness of the dangers of concentrated wealth and power. These findings suggest that we've got our work cut out for us, because, evidently, too many Americans are still in the dark about how truly unequal our country has become. But, as more light is cast on the truths behind inequality, our movement for justice will grow stronger.

Read more: David Cay Johnston digs deeper into Norton and Ariely's study.

If you'd like to help counter this pandemic of unawareness, check out UFE's workshop, "The Growing Divide: The Roots of Economic Insecurity," or our book, Teaching Economics As If People Mattered, and consider hosting an educational event for folks in your neighborhood.

If you work with a community-based organization and would be interested in attending or co-hosting a future UFE Training of Trainers Institute (ToT), send a note to [email protected] mentioning "ToT inquiry" in the subject line.

Also, join our mailing list, tell your friends, family and colleagues to do the same, and we'll keep you up-to-date with the latest news on economic justice.

Photo above by PhotoJohnny on Flickr.

What do coal mining and tax cuts for the wealthy have in common? Both are economic injustices that favor the wealthy, burden low-income people, and add to the imbalance of our economy.

Last week, nearly 2,000 protesters traveled from Appalachia to Washington, D.C. to demand an end to the mountaintop removal, including Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), a member of UFE’s Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative.

For years, state and federal policies have allowed wealthy coal companies to use explosives to remove the tops of mountains to extract coal. In Appalachia, wealthy coal companies are literally moving mountains to access the precious resources beneath them, leaving life-long residents of the surrounding communities with barren fields and dried up streams.

In response to these unjust practices, citizens of the Appalachian region descended upon Washington, D.C. to demand an end to the harmful mountaintop removal practices that are irreversibly destructing their natural resources. Although the protest was peaceful -- a celebration of Appalachian culture and natural resources -- over 100 protesters were arrested in front of the White House for civil disobedience.

Mountaintop removal is an all-too-common example of how, when a low-income community and a wealthy corporation go head-to-head, the corporation with the biggest bank account wins almost every time. Just as our tax policies have been designed to favor the wealthy, our environmental policies are too often crafted with little concern for the well being of low-income communities.

Does this sound eerily familiar to the slash-and-burn approach of our big banks?  

Our economic and environmental issues cannot be dealt with in a vacuum. Creating a fair economy means taking a holistic approach to designing policies that allow all people to flourish, despite the size of their bank account. This means being able to make ends meet and trusting that the natural beauty of ones’ local environment will not be destroyed in the name of short-sighted corporate greed.

Just as mountaintop removal causes devastation to our natural resources, an imbalanced economy means our that our schools suffer, local infrastructures crumble, and the middle class struggles while the wealthy minority sit atop bloated bank accounts. Like the people of Appalachia, we must feel empowered to demand better from our policymakers.

As the battle in Congress over the estate tax heats up, it is critical to make your voice heard. The estate tax doesn’t just impact wealthy billionaires. Policies that favor the rich affect everyone.

That's right -- if you rely on your paycheck each month to make rent, you have a stake in the estate tax.

Over the past decade, we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from hard-working middle class people to the rich. Today, the richest one percent of Americans own a whopping 36 percent of the wealth in this country. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent of American households. 

Our economy is no accident; it’s not like a hurricane or tornado that just occurs naturally. Our economy is the direct result of deliberate policy decisions made in favor of the rich and at the expense of the middle class. And if you think that’s unfair, it’s time to make your voice heard.

So get mad, grab a computer, and start writing! Compose a letter to the editor to tell your neighbors, friends, and community why a strong estate tax is both a common sense solution for addressing our nation’s budget woes and a critical part of a fair and equitable tax system.

Here are a few talking points, phrases, and tips to help you write a zinger of a letter.

First, a few need-to-know points about the estate tax:

• It only affects those who can afford it
  In 2009, you only had to pay the estate tax if your individual estate was more than $3.5 million or $7 million for a couple. Only 1 in 500 estates were expected to pay the tax in 2009 (that’s just 5,500 per year). This overwhelmingly does not include family farms and small businesses (only 110 each year in the entire nation would qualify).

• It encourages charitable donations
  Getting rid of the estate tax would devastate our non-profit sector by removing the tax incentive to give. Experts predict that charitable donations would decrease between 23 and 40 percent.

• We can’t afford NOT to tax millionaires and billionaires
  Talk about irresponsible financial management -- permanent repeal of the estate tax would cost over $1 trillion dollars in the first decade, which includes lost revenue and interest payments on our ballooning national debt.

Second, a few phrases to help you drive the point home:

• Millionaires and billionaires should be giving to charity, not getting it.
• We should be making a down payment on our national debt rather than taxing our children to create tax giveaways for the wealthy.
• Politicians who think the rich aren’t rich enough have been spending too much time with lobbyists, bankers, and CEOs – or getting too much campaign money from them.
• More economic demand is what creates jobs, not tax breaks.  More tax breaks for dead multi-millionaires do not create jobs.

Finally, a few writing tips:

• KISS your letters (keep it simple, stupid). A concise, clear letter is easier for your readers to comprehend. Crank it out and send it off.
• Refer to something specific that was printed in the paper the past few days. Explain why you agree or disagree with the writer.
• Give your letter a local flavor by including how many estates in your state paid the tax. Find out here (pdf).   
• Tell your story; make it personal. How do tax cuts for the wealthy like the estate tax impact your life?

Once you’re done, zip it off to your local paper (you can find the email here) and email it to United for a Fair Economy at [email protected]. And then keep the pressure on. After all, tax policies won’t change themselves.

Image by c. cich on Flickr.

This October, tens of thousands of Americans will gather at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC for a mass expression of solidarity for the progressive social change all of our communities desperately need. 

One Nation Working Together is a call for people from all walks of life to march as one – to put our workforce back in good jobs, for quality and affordable education and healthcare, and for equality of opportunity for all.

Now that Glenn Beck's disgusting misappropriation of the anniversary of the March on Washington, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., has come and gone, it's our turn.

On Saturday, October 2, 2010, Beck's message of fear and hate, and gimmicks posing for real solutions will be replaced by a collective voice for the common good.

We hope you will participate in this inspiring and historic event!

Click here for details and transportation options for the One Nation march.

If you'd like to march alongside other UFE supporters, please contact Kathy Lique at [email protected] for details on where to meet in advance of the march.

By Robert Frank - WSJ Blog - Sept. 20, 2010

As Congress and President Obama fight over the Bush tax cuts, a small number of left-leaning rich people have come out in support of paying higher taxes. The most famous are the members of the Responsible Wealth Project, who say they pay too little in taxes and want to address inequality.

They may be an eccentric minority, or (in the view of conservatives) a lunatic fringe. But a Quinnipiac University poll this year showed nearly two-thirds of those with household incomes of more than $250,000 a year support raising their own taxes to reduce the federal deficit.

So not all of the wealthy are angry about tax hikes. But that doesn’t mean they just want bigger government. What they want is better government – and investment in growth.

An op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times by Garrett Gruener, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, makes two important points about taxing the rich. (Mr. Gruener founded Ask.com and is the CEO of Nanomix and is a co-founder of Alta Partners, so he’s got street cred.)

First, he says tax rates don’t make or break the success of an entrepreneur – or the jobs he creates. He says he’s paying the lowest rates of his working life. But “if you want the simple, honest truth, from my perspective as an entrepreneur, the fluctuation didn’t affect what I did with my money. None of my investments has ever been motivated by the rate at which I would have to pay personal income tax,” Mr. Gruener writes.

History, he says, shows that “modest changes in the tax rate for wealthy taxpayers don’t make much of a difference if the goal is to build new companies, drive technological development and stimulate new industries.”

Second, an economy built only on the rich – who account for the lion’s share of income and spending – is unsustainable.

“What American businesspeople know, and have known since Henry Ford insisted that his employees be able to afford to buy the cars they made, is that a thriving economy doesn’t just need investors; it needs people who can buy the goods and services businesses create.”

He says the tax hikes for the rich should be invested by government in infrastructure and research. Preserving his tax rates won’t lead him to start new companies in the U.S.

“What will change my investment decisions is if I see an economy doing better, one in which there is demand for the goods and services my investments produce. I am far more likely to invest if I see a country laying the foundation for future growth.”

Do you think entrepreneurs make their start-up decisions based on tax rates?

Read Robert Frank's blog on the Wall Street Journal and post your own comments.

• Congress should extend the tax cuts for working and middle class families, and not hold them hostage to tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%.
• Households in the top 5% received almost half of the Bush tax cuts since 2001 – a total of about $980 billion.
• Congress should end the tax cuts for households in the top 2%. If your household income is over $250,000 ($200,000 for an individual), include the fact that your income is in the top 2%.
• Returning the top tax rates to pre-Bush levels (36% and 39.6%) for just the top 2% would result in $690 billion in much-needed revenue over the next 10 years ($830 billion counting interest on the debt), and would generate $80 billion in just the next two years alone.
• People in the top 2% are not likely to spend their tax savings, so extending the cuts would not result in significant job growth or benefit to the economy. Again, if you are in the top 2%, please include that fact.
• It is a myth that small businesses would bear the brunt – only 3% of small businesses would be affected at all, and many of those 3% are law firm partners, real estate partners, or hedge fund managers, not really small businesses.
• If you are a small business owner, please state that, as a small business owner, I resent being used as a poster child for a cause that would not benefit me and I do not support.   

• Keep it short and sweet; make it personal to your knowledge and experience, crank it out and send it off; send us a copy if you can.
• Most papers have an email address where you can submit your letter.
• Letters should refer to something specific that was printed in that paper in the past few days - there have been many stories in the news recently about President Obama's position on the Bush tax cuts and on Congressional wavering.

Letting the portion of the Bush tax cuts that benefit the top tax brackets expire was a key part of candidate Obama's platform in the 2008 Presidential election. It was one of the key differences between his proposals and the proposals of John McCain.

President Obama has been in office for more than a year and a half, and the time has come for Congress to act on his signature tax proposal. But now, a powerful lobbying campaign is underway to sway the debate and hand out new tax breaks to top earners.

The same leaders that pushed through the Bush tax cuts - with their lopsided benefits for the rich - in the first place are mobilizing the same people to make the same arguments now to keep them in place. They were wrong ten years ago when the first of the Bush tax cuts was passed. Our disastrous economy proves that. And they are wrong now.

They have a powerful lobby and plenty of funding, but we're here organizing to make sure that candidate Obama's pledge is upheld. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have been draining our economy for ten years too long already. It's time to end them now.

Bring Back the Estate Tax Now

By Robert Rubin & Julian Robertson
Column featured in The Wall Street Journal on September 1, 2010

With a host of other issues behind it, Congress is finally turning its attention to the expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. But there is one tax issue that should have long since been addressed: the federal estate tax. That tax expired at the end of last year, and there have been no estate taxes levied this year. If a new estate tax is not enacted as soon as Congress returns from its August recess, this void will continue until the end of the year.

We would recommend continuing 2009's regime, with a top rate of 45% and a $3.5 million individual exemption. Small businesses and family farms can be protected both through the exemption (which is $7 million for a couple) and through special deferred payment rules.

We both believe that the estate tax should be a component of any federal tax system. Our government is always going to collect and rely on tax revenues to pay for the activities that our citizens want and need government to perform. A key criterion in choosing taxes is to have the least negative impact on economic activity. The estate tax, in our opinion, meets that test.

An estate tax can provide revenue—with little, if any, adverse supply-side economic impact—to fund deficit reduction, additional public investment or added assistance to those affected by the economic crisis. Used for public investment that has a rapid spend out, or applied to assistance for economically displaced citizens, the net effect will be to increase demand. That's because roughly 100% of the funds would be spent, while part of any large inheritance is highly likely to be used for savings or debt repayment. And either deficit reduction or public investment will better position our country for future economic success.

We also share the view that the estate tax is grounded in powerful philosophical underpinnings. Our nation views itself as a meritocracy and a land of opportunity and we have a proud legacy of upward mobility. An estate tax helps us promote this legacy, by avoiding the accumulation of inherited economic—and political—power that is antithetical to this historical vision of our society and to the vitality and dynamism that has contributed so much to our success.

Failure to restore a permanent and strong estate tax for this year has already cost billions of dollars in federal revenue. But there is still time for Congress to take action for the current year. By acting immediately, Congress can, at a minimum, solve the revenue problem the lapse has created for the remainder of the year. It could also consider going further by making the change apply from the beginning of this year.

Ordinarily in tax matters, the effective date would not precede the date of enactment, or at least the date that a measure was introduced, because Congress knows that taxpayers make their plans based on the existing code. But in the case of the estate tax, presumably nobody's demise was affected in timing by the structuring of our tax laws. And importantly there has been notice—through the president's budget and statements by public officials—that a tax would be enacted earlier this year that would apply to the whole of this year.

The question of how to address the income and other tax cuts that expire this year is already eliciting many conflicting views. But action on the estate tax should not wait. Our country is losing revenue that, with its stressed fiscal conditions, it can ill afford to forego.

Mr. Rubin is co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and former secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Robertson is chairman of Tiger Management LLC.