As for the abuse of or defence against death duties, let me quote a legal maxim: abusum non tollit usum. The fact that people try more or less successfully to dodge a law does not prove that that law is wrong. It only proves that it ought to be enforced more firmly.
The problem is that given the nature of death duties, the temptation to avoid is irresistible (*), and the degree of surveillance and power to command that would have to be afforded the IRS to prevent its evasion would be so vast that it would, on the spot, render any President with control over the IRS an automatic dictator, whenever he felt like reaching out and taking the power at hand. Basically, the IRS would have to have the power to retroactively approve or deny the legitimacy of all sorts of hires, fires, and appointments to the board of relatives to companies owned by someone who then died, and enough funding to exercise this power on a near-continual review basis. When you think about the degree of control over our economy and society that would place in administrative hands, that should make you tremble far worse than the growth of a business aristocracy, which after all has waxed and waned many times since the foundation of the Republic.
(*) It is based, after all, on love for one's own family, one of the strongest human motivations.
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Date: 2006-12-06 07:09 am (UTC)The problem is that given the nature of death duties, the temptation to avoid is irresistible (*), and the degree of surveillance and power to command that would have to be afforded the IRS to prevent its evasion would be so vast that it would, on the spot, render any President with control over the IRS an automatic dictator, whenever he felt like reaching out and taking the power at hand. Basically, the IRS would have to have the power to retroactively approve or deny the legitimacy of all sorts of hires, fires, and appointments to the board of relatives to companies owned by someone who then died, and enough funding to exercise this power on a near-continual review basis. When you think about the degree of control over our economy and society that would place in administrative hands, that should make you tremble far worse than the growth of a business aristocracy, which after all has waxed and waned many times since the foundation of the Republic.
(*) It is based, after all, on love for one's own family, one of the strongest human motivations.