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Death and Taxes
Nov. 3rd, 2010 09:13 amOne of the reasons I went to LA was to be with mom when she went to the lawyer handling my dad’s estate. Mom’s never had to handle legal stuff and property stuff, we thought it’d be a good idea to have another set of eyes and ears there. And holy crap that stuff is complicated. It’s so detailed, and getting the details right has huge implications in money, taxes, time, and rights, it’s scary. I want to complain about how complicated it is, but then I’m reminded of when the technicians on our ion implanters complain about the software being too complicated. It’s complicated for a reason: we need the system to do a whole lot of stuff. We need flexibility to handle every case we can imagine, and customers are constantly making requests for new features, and new features and changes and fixes have ramifications on other parts of the system. We complain about crazy laws and sleazy lawyers, but we have no one to blame but ourselves – we keep wanting our own little tax breaks, our special legal protections, our reactions to new social realities.
So I’m getting acquainted with the The Estate Tax. Since my dad died in 2010, his estate is passed to us tax free. That’s thanks to George W Bush’s tax cuts, which were written to expire next year, and then Estate Tax will go back to the way it had always been: the first $1 million dollars is tax-free, more than that the government takes half. I have no problem with an Estate Tax. Lets say your parents die and leave you five million dollars. You get $1 million free and clear, plus half of the remaining $4 million adds up to three million dollars. How greedy do you have to be to complain that you’re only getting $3,000,000? People get so annoying when they complain about high taxes. The government is “taking” your money? The government is paying for all the stuff that enables you to make that money. The roads and trains so you can get to work, the police that keep people from stealing your shit, the fire department that keeps your shit from burning down. All those wars you want to start - it’s really expensive to send our soldiers to other countries to kill people and destroy their shit.
So I’m getting acquainted with the The Estate Tax. Since my dad died in 2010, his estate is passed to us tax free. That’s thanks to George W Bush’s tax cuts, which were written to expire next year, and then Estate Tax will go back to the way it had always been: the first $1 million dollars is tax-free, more than that the government takes half. I have no problem with an Estate Tax. Lets say your parents die and leave you five million dollars. You get $1 million free and clear, plus half of the remaining $4 million adds up to three million dollars. How greedy do you have to be to complain that you’re only getting $3,000,000? People get so annoying when they complain about high taxes. The government is “taking” your money? The government is paying for all the stuff that enables you to make that money. The roads and trains so you can get to work, the police that keep people from stealing your shit, the fire department that keeps your shit from burning down. All those wars you want to start - it’s really expensive to send our soldiers to other countries to kill people and destroy their shit.
