Spencer Cox: “when I first introduced legislation to repeal the death tax in 1993, the Democratic leader was seeking to increase death…”

“when I first introduced legislation to repeal the death tax in 1993, the Democratic leader was seeking to increase death taxes. But slowly but surely over four congresses, we have put together a consensus of Democrats and Republicans in this body and the other body behind the simple notion: the death tax, even though it is intended to soak the filthy rich, does not really fall on them. It falls on low-wage workers. Mr. Speaker, people who fall in the category of the top 2 percent richest Americans, names that we have heard during this debate like Ted Turner or Bill Gates, will not benefit from the passage of this legislation because they will not pay the death tax. To a certainty, the one person who will not pay the death tax is the rich dead person. But beyond that even those who survive, through estate planning, through all manner of complicated trusts and avoidance schemes, not to mention lifetime gifts, successfully avoid most of the burden of this tax. The real burden of this tax falls on the low-wage worker, the woman who works for a business or a farm or a ranch that is family owned, because every day she does not know what happens when the founder dies. If part of that business has to be sold off or all of it has to be sold off to pay the tax man as so often happens, then people lose their jobs. Many more people than there are dead rich persons at whom this tax is aimed. And when they lose their jobs, their tax rate is 100 percent.”