Talk:Death tax

--I've reverted most of the changes made by User:Feco. My biggest problem with them came from the media section. I looked in Lexis-Nexis and the vast preponderance of U.S. papers only reported it in the context of a quote, or put up scare quotes; even the Washington Times did this (obviously excluding editorials). In addition, I think it's fair to refer to death tax as a political slogan; it's only used by people on one side of a debate. Finally, there's no need to remove the "conservative", IMO--it's a fairly accurate descriptor for the overwhelming majority of those who seek to remove the tax. I've split the difference, calling them "conservative opponents of the estate tax". Hope these changes are satisfactory. Best, Meelar (talk) 06:18, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Political Slogan?

I dropped the label political slogan lower down in the article because it seems that the term is no longer used solely as a slogan. I pulled "Two Americas" from the List of political slogans page as a rough equivalent to "Death Tax"... neither conveys a specific action/result/change. Both are short. A Google News search for the former indicates that almost all usage in print media is qualified with "Edwards' speech..." or something similar. A Google News search for the latter indicates that there isn't a similar level of qualification. I think there's no question that the term originated as a slogan, but I don't think it's still used as one. If you ask the guy in line at the store to do word association, "Two Americas" is a lot more likely to produce Democrat/Kerry/Edwards than "Death Tax" is like to produce GOP/Republican/Bush. Feco 06:25, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I agree it doesn't fall within the strict definition of a slogan; but we need to make clear that it's a phrase designed to shape the debate and convince people, rather than simply terminology. Maybe we could call it a soundbite, although that's not right either. Perhaps a meme? Meelar (talk) 07:10, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

How about:

"The term death tax is used by those opposed to the legal concept of an estate or inheritance tax, which is a tax on the value of a deceased individual's assets before they are passed on to heirs."

That wording expresses the usage of "death tax" as a tool to shape debate. Feco 07:31, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a very good wording--thanks. I'll make that change now. Meelar (talk) 07:56, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Journalism Treatment

I do think the article should mention non-print journalism. Obviously, it's harder to document specific usages, but I sometimes hear the qualifier "so-called", sometimes not. Also, Google News (relevance rank) shows about 50:50 between quotes/no in newspaper headlines. Since the AP style book doesn't address the issue, by definition there's no journalism consensus. I think the ambiguity of the situation should be documented. I do not think specific publications should be listed in quote/no format... just too much potential for unneeded expansion. Feco 06:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I could agree with removing the specific mention of the Seattle paper, but I must disagree with the rest of what you say. If you do a google news search but toss out editorials and press releases from interested groups, quotation marks clearly win out, backing up the Lexis-Nexis data. And the papers with the largest circulation that I have access to (USA Today, NY Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, LA Times) all use quotation marks--those that don't tend to be smaller [caveat: I have no access to the Wall Street Journal]. I think it's pretty clear that quotation marks are by far the more common usage in mainstream news. Meelar (talk) 07:06, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

did more searching... the usage style is ambiguous enough that I'm happy with the descritpion in the article.. it does seem that the major wires all use quotes. Feco 02:02, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Conservative or no

I don't like the use of broad political labels on specific issues in general... especially here. Some who support the estate tax do it on principle, others do it out of fiscal concern. Some who oppose it do so on principle, others do so due to their economic analysis. The for/against column is too muddled to easily split into the GOP/conservative Democratic/liberal grouping. Feco 06:37, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have to disagree on purely empirical grounds, and I kind of think the burden of proof is on you here. Could you name some non-conservative (and preferably semi-prominent) users of the slogan/phrase? Best, Meelar (talk) 07:00, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Just to make clear, I'm have no problem with the current presentation ("it is used mainly...") Feco 01:59, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm do having apparently very un-good grammar lately. ("I'm have no problem..." what the heck is that?) Feco 16:41, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See Also

I expanded See Also. I re-added the link to gift tax. I have heard the use of gift tax as a perfect synonym for inheritance tax in some European countries. Technically, gift/inheritance is a tax when money "leaves" the estate (paid by inheritors). An estate tax is a tax when money "enters" the estate on the moment of death (paid by the estate). Feco 08:59, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ah, OK. I wasn't aware of that usage, and our article on gift tax doesn't mention it--I thought it was a tax on gifts made while the giver is still living. It might be useful to update the article on gift tax with this information. Thanks very much for the corrections. Yours, Meelar (talk) 15:38, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

"It should be noted that the death tax does not apply to everyone, only the wealthiest 2 percent of the nation and provides a large amount of tax money for the U.S. seeing as how ten percent of the nation owns seventy-one percent of the wealth."

There seem to be a couple problems with this recent edit, one being that it's in the wrong section, and two this is a very specific but uncited claim. I will remove it until further notice. --Ur Wurst Enema 01:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

POV fork?

This looks like something close to a POV fork of Estate tax in the United States. Famspear (talk) 17:13, 5 June 2008 (UTC)