Superwealthy Try Rehash Of Estate Tax Lies To Avoid Helping Reduce Deficit

Yesterday I had the nerve to mention that the superwealthy opponents of the estate tax are deathly afraid that once the current law brings back the estate tax next year to a 55% tax rate and a $2M inheritance income threshold, Congress won't want to touch it because it will greatly help reduce the deficit.

This apparently gave America's richest heirs the vapors.

One of the main front groups for the superwealthy pushing complete repeal of the estate tax, the happy-happy sounding American Family Business Institute, became obsessed with me on Twitter in hopes of shifting the argument away from the deficit.

Instead of dealing with the fact that a fair estate tax would help reduce the deficit, the AFBI tweeters resorted to the usual attempts at misdirection and misleading.

They attempted to claim Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz backs repeal of the estate tax, when Stiglitz is in fact a strong defender of estate taxes. (Stiglitz merely wrote an academic paper 30 years ago cautioning against "prohibitively high" estate taxes, at a time when the rates were over 70%.)

They attempted to claim that small businesses would be harmed by the estate tax, when in fact only 80 small businesses and farms paid any estate tax in 2009 and only 600 estates with business assets paid estate taxes of over $100,000.

They then proceeded to get into a ridiculous argument about what the proper definition of a small business is.

Anything to avoid facing up to the question: why shouldn't America's richest heirs contribute more to reducing the nation's deficit?

The misrepresentations are not surprising, considering The American Family Business Institute is itself a misrepresentation.

AFBI pawns itself off as a representative of small business, but as Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy uncovered recently, AFBI is part of a anti-estate tax network financed by a handful of multi--millionaire families. Their report finds: "These families – the members of which own the first and third largest privately held companies in the United States and hold about a 40 percent share in the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart – stand to save a whopping $71.6 billion if their bid succeeds."

Regarding AFBI, the report tracks key funding back to a member of the Forbes 400:

The AFBI, a 501(c)(6) non-profit group, was formed in 1992 by Harold Apolinsky, an estate
planner whom the AFBI’s Web site dubs the “Godfather” of the repeal campaign....

...Apolinsky has received significant financing from at least one of the wealthy families profiled in this report. In the mid-1990s, Apolinsky began receiving contributions from John Harbert, the only person in Alabama who was in the Forbes 400. AFBI put that money toward a grant of approximately $200,000 to the Heritage Foundation, which resulted in a study, “The Case for Repealing the Estate Tax,” that was influential in gaining Republican support for repeal.

John’s son, Raymond Harbert, now serves as a leader and benefactor of the group. He is AFBI’s “funding chairman” and has personally contributed $500,000 to the AFBI. The AFBI says its members own a total of 507 businesses, but the group discloses no specific information about the identities of its members. Apolinsky said in 2005 that three of his clients are billionaires.

These are the folks that will do anything so they won't have to pay their fair share to so we can invest in America's future while keeping America on firm fiscal footing over the long-term. True patriots.

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