Republican Tax Priorities

If Congressional Republicans get their way, expiring cuts in the estate tax for America’s wealthiest families will be extended in 2013. But under their cruel plan, enhancements to tax credits for low- and moderate-income working families, which are also set to expire at the end of the year, would end. Extending the estate tax cut would benefit the estates of the wealthiest 0.3 percent of Americans who die in 2013 — about 7,000 people. Ending the tax credits would hurt some 13 million working families, including nearly 26 million children, many of whom live at or near the poverty line. Republicans in the House have already approved legislation — and similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate — that would undo a compromise tax plan approved in 2010. Back then, Republicans demanded estate tax cuts in exchange for extending the bolstered earned-income tax credits and child tax credits for working families that had been part of the 2009 stimulus. Under duress, the Obama administration agreed to temporarily raise the value of an estate that would be exempt from tax to $5 million ($10 million for married couples) from $3.5 million ($7 million for couples), the level in 2009. It also agreed to cut the top estate tax rate to 35 percent from 45 percent. In exchange for that tax cut, Republicans agreed to preserve improvements to the earned-income tax credit and child credit that help to ensure that low-income working families with children do not fall below the poverty line. Now, with another year-end showdown looming over expiring tax cuts, Republicans want to keep the generous provisions for the estate tax and end the enhancements to the working family tax credits. The winners would be the few and the wealthy: the Tax Policy Center has estimated that the estate tax breaks save wealthy heirs an average of $1.1 million per estate, compared with the 2009 estate tax law. The losers would be the many and the hard pressed: a married couple with three children and earnings at the estimated poverty line ($27,713) would lose $1,934 in tax credits in 2013, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The divide is especially noteworthy in the swing states. In Florida, 900 estates would get an estate-tax break, while nearly one million Florida families, with 1.7 million children, would see a tax increase. In Ohio, 140 estates would get a tax cut, while nearly 500,000 families, with nearly one million children, would face higher taxes. In Virginia, 220 estates would get a tax break, compared with 275,000 working families, with nearly 500,000 children, that would have their taxes rise. The heirs of the wealthiest people in America do not need continued tax breaks, nor can the nation afford the giveaway. Low- and moderate-income working Americans need all the help they can get. That is not the way Republicans see it, but that is the way it is.