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The Lapsed Estate Tax’s First Victim

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

And by that we mean, he was only 13 hours away from 2010, when the estate tax expired.
Fritz Lohman of New York died at 11 am on December 31, just barely missing the opportunity to save his heir millions in taxes:

Lohman, 87, a SoHo real-estate magnate who pioneered the exhibition of gay art, died at home at about 11 a.m. on New Year’s Eve after a long illness. If he had instead passed away after midnight Jan.1, his partner of 48 years could have avoided paying at least $3 million in estate taxes — thanks to Congress letting that levy lapse for 2010.

For you populists out there, you could probably give a rat’s ass about but jesus, that just sucks. Thirteen hours. That’s shorter than some Law & Order marathons.
Dying 13 hrs. too soon cost $3 mil in taxes [NYP]

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Wilbur Ross Would Like to Torpedo the Income Tax and Replace It with a VAT

Why? Because we need the tax policy equivalent of Law & Order: SVU.

“We need something that is very far-reaching, very dramatic,” said Ross, the head of W.L. Ross & Co. “An idea I’ve been in favor of is to scrap all of the corporate income taxes, all of the individual income taxes, and substitute a value-added tax on all goods imported into the country and manufactured and consumed here, and then rebate it on exports.”

Oh and that jobs bill? It’s bupkis:

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