Two sides to estate tax.

• Author: Bishop, Bob
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

I am a subscriber and a great fan of The Progressive, but I take exception to the Editor's Note in the February issue ("Obama, the Hang-Glider," by Matthew Rothschild), which states that "the super rich got a huge break on the estate tax." I assure you that I am not "super rich," but some would say that I benefit from the exclusion. There are two sides to this issue.

I am a retired construction manager. I started working when I was fourteen years old. I put myself through college and inherited zero when my parents died.

By living well below my means for forty-five years and investing conservatively, I was able to accumulate substantial assets. These assets have been taxed as ordinary income (no tax avoidance for me).

To subject these assets to an estate tax upon my death amounts to double taxation, which is unfair, undemocratic, and should not be tolerated.

Bob Bishop

Park Ridge, Illinois

The Editor responds:

I noted that the tax deal President Obama signed off on lets the super rich "give their heirs $5 million tax free" instead of the $1 million that would have happened had the Bush tax been repealed. Actually, I was wrong: Now the super rich get to give their heirs $5,250,000 tax free. If you're in that bracket, I'd say you qualify as super-rich, though you're probably not in Bill Gates's league.

The "double taxation" argument is also specious--and a favorite of the rightwing. Most taxes are "double taxes." My income is taxed, and then when I go to the store, it's taxed again. So the sales tax is a double tax. The property tax is a double tax.

The question shouldn't...