Senator’s estate-tax critique talks of booze, women
Over the weekend, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, hashed over the Republicans’ new tax plan with his home state’s Des Moines Register. Turning to the party’s idea to do away with the estate tax, Grassley framed the current law as a hindrance to responsible saving.
“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley told the Register. “As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
The estate tax, often described by Republicans as the “death tax,” is levied only on the very rich, individuals who pass on assets of more than $5.5 million, $11 million for married couples. The current tax on estates is 40 percent.
The suggestion — that anyone not socking away their savings in the bank or investments must be profligately throwing their money away — played directly into the critique that Republicans are disconnected from the majority of working Americans.
“Darn straight, Sen. Grassley,” former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson tweeted. “(I)f we gave that money in middle class tax cuts, they’d just waste it on hookers and blow. right?”
Under the Senate tax planned passed early Saturday, the exemptions are both raised to $11 million per individual and $22 million per couple. The House version of the bill does the same but also axes the tax completely in 2024.
In Iowa, Republicans have argued that the tax creates a cost-prohibitive situation for farmers hoping to pass their farms on to heirs.
But the Register, citing 2016 data from the IRS, determined that 5,219 tax returns were impacted by the current estate tax. Only 682, or 13 percent, of the tax filers owned farm assets. The paper also referenced a 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service noting only 65 farm estates in the U.S. annually are touched by the tax.
But even if farmers are not impacted directly, “(M) any are forced into spending large sums of their hardearned dollars on lawyers and accountants to avoid its impact instead of reinvesting in their business,” Grassley said.