A group of wealthy people that includes Warren Buffett, George Soros and former President Jimmy Carter is pressing Congress to roll back estate tax parameters, saying the current set-up leaves “too much revenue on the table.” The group of roughly three dozen people released a statement on Tuesday calling for both the current estate tax exemption to fall, from roughly $5 million a person to $2 million, and for the rate to rise from a top level of 35 percent to a minimum of 45 percent. [The Hill, FairEconomy.org]
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George Steinbrenner’s Final Win: The Estate Tax?
By now most of you have heard that George Steinbrenner passed away this morning at age 80. We’d ask that you to wait at least a few hours before you start dispensing with the Costanza or GS quotes in Larry David’s voice (“Big Stein wants an eggplant calzone!”) but we realize not every one was a fan of the Boss.
The silver lining in Big Stein’s death is that since the estate tax still remains in limbo among the hallowed walls of Congress, his $1.1 billion fortune (Forbes’ latest ranking) could possibly pass to his heirs tax free.
It’s an especially well-timed passing if you read yesterday’s morbid Wall St. Journal article. If you didn’t happen to read it, the article more or less made the case for every wealthy person to give serious consideration to paging Jack Kevorkian, taking a nice warm bath with a toaster or whatever their preferred method of self-imposed death would be.
Steinbrenner is the third billionaire to pass on to the big baseball diamond in the sky (btw, can someone up there keep him away from Billy Martin?) this year – Walter Shorenstein and Dan Duncan are the others – and if the family is as shrewd about their money as they are about their baseball team, they will likely fight any retroactive provisions in the new estate tax (assuming it ever passes).
As with mentioned in the Duncan post, we hope that the Steinbrenners are able to keep their fortune; not because we’re opposed to taxing the rich (just ask AG), it’s because we’re opposed to an incompetent and impotent Congress who allowed the estate tax to expire in the first place. Besides, GS went out with the Yankees as reigning champs, so it seems fitting that he gets a final win against the tax man as well.
RIP Big Stein.
More Tax Clients for Ludacris (or His CPA)
As you’re no doubt aware, the IRS has taken exception with the notion that many of our favorite celebrities and athletes can do no wrong. As detestable as this thought might be, Doug Shulman and his merry band of tax collectors are not impressed with these pillars of the community turning a blind eye to their patriotic obligations.
Some of the latest examples of celebrity tax avoidance:
• Corey Feldman – Technically it’s Corey Feldman Inc. that owes the IRS $31k but same diff.
• Faith Evans – Widow of Notorious B.I.G. Grammy winner. Soon-to-be reality TV star. The combination of these things somehow doesn’t allow her to scrape together $360k.
• Mel Blount – Okay, we have to admit that we don’t know who the hell this guy is but the sports historians and the entire city of Pittsburgh are probably familiar. For everyone else – he’s a former Steelers’ cornerback that was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1989. He owes taxes for every year from 1994 to 2006 (with the exception of ’07) for grand total of $652k. Seriously, this is f—ing ridiculous. Even Nicolas Cage manages to file a tax return once a decade. There’s not one CPA in all of the ‘Burgh that can help this guy?
As the title indicates, our advice to these people is to get in touch with Luda “I pay more in taxes than most people would ever imagine” cris ASAP. Whether he’s mastered TurboTax or managed to find a solid CPA, it doesn’t matter because, as you might recall, “you will never hear about Ludacris owing the damn IRS no damn money.”
Source: Tax Watchdog