Will Kent Hovind Become This Year’s Cliven Bundy?
Ernie Land tells me that they have not been able to raise enough money for a conventional defense. He also indicated that there is a group of businessmen anxious to back a commercial version of Dinosaur Adventureland that Kent could provide the intellectual guidance for. One of their conditions is that he become conventionally tax compliant. Kent has actually indicated that he might consider adopting a similar course to Eric and focus on exposing the lies of evolution and saving souls to the exclusion of fighting the tax system. I hope it is not too late for that.
President Obama Would Make Death A Taxable Event
This proposal is so radical because it goes far beyond carryover basis. It makes death and gifting realization events. If a family has an appreciated asset that will be held indefinitely one strategy would be to gift it gradually taking advantage of annual exclusions and perhaps aggressive valuations. This proposal would create the possibility of an immediate income tax event. Furthermore, this proposal would, in effect, be creating an estate tax for smaller estates.
Of course, we don’t have the devilish details yet. There is talk of a small business exception. You could come up with other examples that would work a hardship on a middle class family that has for example a cherished vacation home.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.