This post was originally published on this site
Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of animator Walt Disney and a member of a pro-tax group of millionaires, said she supported a proposal from Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders to raise federal taxes on inherited wealth.
“My grandfather paid a much higher effective tax rate than we do now, and yet still managed, after paying off the Estate Tax, to leave significant wealth behind to benefit not only his son, but his four grandchildren and even his 16 great-grandchildren,” she said in prepared remarks at Senate Budget Committee hearing Thursday.
“Did it really need to be more than that? What did we ever do to earn the first dollar and what gives us the right to think that any dollar given to the government is a dollar stolen from us?” she asked.
Sanders unveiled his proposal as one of a pair of bills that collectively would raise almost $1.5 trillion in revenues over 11 years, according to tax bill scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxes. The estate tax bill would boost revenues by $430 billion, JCT said.
Currently, estates and gifts worth a total of $11.7 million – an amount previously set by Congress at $10 million but which adjusts for inflation annually – are taxed at 40%. Sanders’ bill would reduce the exemption amounts separately to $3.5 million for estates and $1 million for gifts and tax them at progressively higher rates depending on their size, starting at 45% and ending at 65% for taxable amounts of more than $1 billion. The exemption amounts would not be indexed for inflation.
Few estates are large enough to be taxed under the current exemption amounts and Disney said lowering the amount to $3.5 million would affect 0.5% of estates.
“It would not force the sale of family farms or break up small businesses. It would, on the other hand, go a long way toward preventing the accumulation of the kind of dynastic wealth that threatens democracy, governance, and human rights everywhere it is found,” she said.
Disney is part of a group called Patriotic Millionaires that describes itself as being made up of high net worth individuals, business leaders and investors “united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America.”
In addition to the estate tax bill, Sanders also unveiled a bill to overhaul international corporate taxes. The JCT estimated that bill would raise about $1.021 trillion over 11 years.
Shares of Walt Disney Co.
DIS,
the company started by Disney’s grandfather, were up slightly at mid-dayThursday.
