On the recordDecember 1, 2010
You have a person, and say he's a couple of years away from dying and he has this business and this business is worth millions of dollars. Now there are two courses he can take. The first is he goes and drinks like mad, does drugs, chases women, gambles it all away, and in every way wastes the money. Does he pay any tax on it? He has already paid the taxes. No. So the government lets him off scot-free for that. So we encourage that behavior. But what happens if he says, hey, I have a son, I would like to pass the business on to my son. And he has some employees and they want to buy part of the business, so I'm going to not squander my money, but I'm going to save it. So he waits 5 years, saves his money, dies, and now what do we do? We tax the family 55 percent. Now how many people have a business--picture if it's a farm or a manufacturing business--where you've got to take more than half of it, liquidate it to sell it in order to pay the tax on it. It's going to destroy the business. And so we have a policy that rewards people for being totally irresponsible and punishes people for doing the right thing. As Dr. Laffer said, that's just so contrary to common sense. And what are we going to do? We're going to let that death tax go from zero to 55 percent. That is just nuts.
