Sanford Bishop: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join Representative Brady on this important…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join Representative Brady on this important bipartisan legislation to repeal the death tax once and for all. I have always believed that the death tax is politically misguided, morally unjustified, and downright un-American. It is really a tax on success. The assets that people want to pass on to their progeny have already been taxed. If it is a business or if it is a farm, the individuals who earned it, who started the business, they paid income taxes. If it was a corporation, the corporation paid taxes also. Why should it be taxed a third time just to be passed on and just to keep the business together? It undermines the life work and life savings of farmers, small- to medium-sized businesses in Georgia and all across the Nation. We have all heard the statistics. The United States has the fourth- highest estate tax in the industrialized world at 40 percent. Only Japan, South Korea, and France have higher death taxes. Thirteen countries have repealed their taxes since 2000. It has a disproportionate impact on African Americans. A study by the Boston College professors John Havens and Paul Schervish several years ago estimated that between 2001 and 2055, the death tax will erase between 11 percent and 13 percent of all African American wealth. This one tax alone will cost African American households between $192 billion and $257 billion.…”