For 3 years now we’ve listened to Peter Roskam whine about the estate tax, or the “death tax” as Roskam likes to label it, as being unfair to entrepreneurs and family-owned small businesses. Here’s video of Roskam just this past May speaking on the House floor complaining about rejection the amendment to H.R. 2352 Job Creation Through Entrepreneurship Act of 2009 to permanently repeal the estate tax.:
So what happens when Roskam is given the opportunity to vote on the permanent estate tax relief for small business that he has been begging for? Roskam votes against against it.
The vote was on H.R. 4154: Permanent Estate Tax Relief for Families, Farmers and Small Businesses Act of 2009. The measure amends current tax law which provides for an increase in the top estate tax rate to 55% and a decrease in the tax exemption to $1 million in 2011. Instead, the current exemption of $3.5 million would be made permanent and the current top rate of 45% frozen.
According to analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), H.R. 4154 would in 2011 reduce the number of estates subject to the tax from 44,230 under current law to a mere 6,420, a reduction of more than 85%. According to CBPP, maintaining the exemption at this level protects the small business that Roskam purports to be concerned about:
Reducing the tax below its 2009 level is not necessary to protect small businesses and farms, nearly all of which already are exempt from the tax under the 2009 rules. Only 100 small business and farm estates in the entire nation would owe any estate tax in 2010 if the 2009 rules were extended, according to the Tax Policy Center, and virtually none of them would have to be sold to pay the tax.
Thus, though the proponents of greater cuts in the estate tax argue that they are needed to protect small businesses and farms, the fact is that small businesses and farms would gain very little from such proposals.
Under this bill, the estate of 99.8% of all Americans would be totally exempt from an estate tax. So, one has to ask, why would Peter Roskam would oppose it. Well, Roskam, pretty much says no to anything that the Democratic majority in the House proposes, thinking it will ultimately result in political advantage to Republicans even if the country suffers for it. But perhaps more important, Roskam’s vote once again demonstrates who Roskam is fighting for in Congress: not the 99.8% of Americans who would be protected by this bill but rather the 0.2% of the country’s wealthiest individuals and families.
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