House votes to extend tax on wealthy estates

The House voted Thursday to indefinitely extend a 45 percent inheritance tax on estates larger than $3.5 million, canceling a one-year repeal of the tax set to begin next month.

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Finance 101: Estate tax hits few ordinary people

As attention turns from Michael Jackson's death to the complex estate the pop icon left behind, experts are sorting through his holdings and putting price tags on their value — with an eye on the tax bill they will generate.

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Senate goes on record to lower estate tax

The Senate has voted to cut taxes on multimillion-dollar estates as it gets ready to pass a budget backed by President Barack Obama.

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Colorado ranchers pray for death of `death' tax

For Dale Allee, a second-generation cattle rancher in southern Colorado, the idiom that nothing is certain but death and taxes is now a reality.

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Group says estate tax affects few, should be kept

Fewer than 1 percent of deaths result in estate tax liabilities, and President-elect Barack Obama's proposal to keep the tax alive after it is slated to expire in 2010 is too generous to the wealthy, a tax policy advocacy group said Wednesday.

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Minimum Wage Workers Lose Political War

Both Democrats and Republicans insist they emerged as winners from last week's failed GOP effort to cut taxes on multimillion dollar estates and raise the minimum wage.

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Senate May Give Minimum Wage Fall Vote

A bill combining an estate tax cut with a boost in the federal minimum wage, an election-year combination engineered by Republicans, may see another vote this fall.

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Senate GOP Leader Delays Estate Tax Vote

Despite a pledge to cut estate taxes by Independence Day, the Senate's Republican leader on Tuesday postponed action on a bill to reduce taxes for heirs.

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Estate Tax Changes by Years

President Bush's first tax cut decreased the estate tax through the decade by gradually increasing the size of an estate exempt from taxation and lowering the top tax rate. The law also repealed the estate tax in 2010. That law remains temporary, and the estate tax reappears in 2011. The law changed the tax over time as follows:

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Senate Rejects Effort to Cut Estate Tax

Senators voted Thursday to reject a Republican effort to abolish taxes on inherited estates during an election year with control of Congress at stake.

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Senate Opens Debate on Fate of Estate Tax

Arguing anew over death and taxes, the Senate opened debate Wednesday to decide whether to take a stab during this election year at slashing or abolishing the estate tax.

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Would the world be a better place if Warren Buffett was the model for how a capitalist should act?

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The American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), two powerful trade associations, were both quick to endorse legislation introduced by Rep.

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The coalition of corporate lobbyists and wealthy families, including the U.S Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, dropped their long standing call for complete abolition of the tax, shifting their lobby resources into weakening the law.

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excerpt: ""Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future blasted out a press release yesterday outlining Gingrich's "new" jobs plan, entitled "Jobs Here. Jobs Now.

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Today is teabagging and tax day. As such, here is a quick reminder from Gallup that higher taxes on the rich are wildly popular...

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Both candidates believe that gun ownership is an individual constitutional right. But their beliefs about the methods government can use to control the sale and carrying of firearms are starkly different.

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Part of your answer stated that the estate tax is supposed to disappear entirely in 2010.

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If Barack Obama wins the election, upper-income people will end up shouldering more of the tax burden.� If John McCain wins, upper-income people might get a tax cut, but only if McCain can persuade what's likely to be a Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with him.

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The reality is that family-owned businesses and their living owners - sons and daughters and grandkids - get punished for inheriting and running a business, and oftentimes have to bail out of the business in order to cover the taxes.

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We don't normally look to Tinsel Town liberals for insights on U.S. tax policy, but Whoopi Goldberg's comments on the estate tax last week deserve more attention.

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Billionaire Warren Buffett testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday in defense of the federal estate tax, the nation's only tax on inherited wealth.

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It's been said there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.

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Billionaire Warren Buffett on Wednesday warned of widening U.S. income disparity and endorsed the estate tax as a check on wealth accumulation, while two senior lawmakers said they want the tax repealed.

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In 2001, an estate worth $675,000 or less was exempt from the federal estate tax. Amounts over $675,000 were taxed at graduated rates that started at 18 percent, rose to 41 percent at $1 million, and crested at 55 percent above $3 million.

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Buffett is the second richest in the world, and he thinks he should have to pay more taxes and doesn't want to get rid of the estate tax. He's not leaving most of his money to his children. Why? Simple: The American dream.

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Buffett is the second richest in the world, and he thinks he should have to pay more taxes and doesn't want to get rid of the estate tax. He's not leaving most of his money to his children. Why? Simple: The American dream.

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A somewhat rambling opinion piece, but the facts are startling: If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.

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An initiative aiming to repeal Washington's estate tax is tugging at the heartstrings -- not to mention the purse strings -- of some of the state's most prominent business owners, including several family-owned newspaper companies.

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George Lakeoff, lately raised to saint of political language, has repeatedly pointed out the skill with which the right has appropriated language and symbols.

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News Haiku: Politics 8/5/06

Republicans think: / Where to hide Estate-Tax cut? / Minimum Wage Bill!

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Democrats said rich Americans have received enough breaks from the Bush administration and the GOP-led Congress.

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For years, organized labor has worked hard to raise the minimum wage, while business groups have campaigned to block such a change.

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