Having been the surprising beneficiary of an uncle's demise, I can assure you that estate taxes, or rather the absence of them, are quite a surprising windfall.

You see, my uncle never paid taxes. He did all he could ever do to defer taxes, buying equipment when he didn't need to, just tons of stuff. I mean tons of stuff, all for the purpose of avoiding taxes.

So, when he died, and I along with some cousins inherited his estate, I thought, well, at least my uncle's estate finally paid taxes.

Nope. No estate taxes. No capital gains. Nada. When the tax lawyer told me I couldn't believe it.

My uncle is probably laughing from the grave, but I'm wondering: how did we ever let people escape paying taxes? We probably got some chumps to repeat the slogan death taxes long enough so they were mesmerized into submission. Thank you for your generousity. Now, let's talk about the deficit.

# posted by Bob Murphy @ 8:14 PM