Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join Representative Brady on this important bipartisan legislation to repeal the death tax once and for all. I have always believed that the death tax is politically misguided, morally unjustified, and downright un-American. It is really a tax on success.

The assets that people want to pass on to their progeny have already been taxed. If it is a business or if it is a farm, the individuals who earned it, who started the business, they paid income taxes. If it was a corporation, the corporation paid taxes also.

Why should it be taxed a third time just to be passed on and just to keep the business together?

It undermines the life work and life savings of farmers, small- to medium-sized businesses in Georgia and all across the Nation.

We have all heard the statistics. The United States has the fourth-highest estate tax in the industrialized world at 40 percent. Only Japan, South Korea, and France have higher death taxes. Thirteen countries have repealed their taxes since 2000.

It has a disproportionate impact on African Americans. A study by the Boston College professors John Havens and Paul Schervish several years ago estimated that between 2001 and 2055, the death tax will erase between 11 percent and 13 percent of all African American wealth. This one tax alone will cost African American households between $192 billion and $257 billion.

Some people have argued that the estate tax is no longer a serious problem since we have permanently raised the exemption to $5 million for individuals and $10 million for couples to index it to inflation. Nothing can be further from the truth.

According to the Georgia Farm Bureau, the exemption is barely keeping pace with increasing farmland values. In fact, the number of farms in Georgia with building and land values of over $5 million rose from 664 to 677 between 2007 and 2012.

I just can't stand by and allow this estate tax to continue to punish family-owned businesses in Georgia and throughout the country. It is not just farmers.

We have heard a lot about farms, but look at funeral homes, funeral directors who have multiple locations with rolling stock, caskets, limousines, hearses. That amounts to a pretty good amount of money.

I have got constituents who own radio stations; finally, worked hard enough to have a family-owned business that would be able to be in communications. They started out with one radio station. Now they have got five stations in three different States.

It is a family business. The husband, the wife, and now the three kids went to college, law school, and they are running the business. It is a shame that they would have to sell that business and, ultimately, have to lay off employees to pay the 40 percent estate tax.

It is clear that the estate tax really hurts the economy.

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Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. A study by the Tax Foundation found that repealing the death tax would increase U.S. capital stock by 2.2 percent, it would boost GDP, and it would create 139,000 jobs, which eventually increases Federal revenue.

This is a tax on success. It is not a big contributor to the revenue of this country. It is a very, very--a drop in the ocean really, and so, it is time to repeal it.

I urge my colleagues to really think realistically, not ideologically, and just do the right thing. I urge you to join my colleagues and repeal the death tax once and for all.

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