The time has come to ELIMINATE THE DEATH TAX!

America’s non-industrial private forest owners—who own 59 percent of America’s forestland, including family farms—are bearing more responsibility than ever before for environmental quality and sustainable timber production. However, the possibility of untimely timber harvests and disruption of established forest management programs due to the current federal death tax policy is becoming increasingly pervasive as timber and land values continue to rise. This trend is counterproductive to society's goals of sustainable forestry and environmental quality. I seek support for the permanent elimination of the death tax. 

• “In a free society with private property rights and a market system, private property is a condition of functionality. Government intervention creates distortion.” —Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 
• “…Irving Fisher wrote clearly that capital shouldn’t be taken out of the economy…The best question is: Does a tax fall on consumption or capital? It’s a bad tax if it taxes capital. Capital should be left in the economy to work for us all…” —Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Laureate in Economic Science, and Professor of Law & Economics, George Mason University 
• If you want less of something, you tax it. Do we really want less capital in our economy? If there is less capital, we have less ability to generate income. 
• What is the point of having a tax that costs more than it raises: $200 billion collected / $750 billion in capital foregone? 
• The death tax brings in less than 1.2 percent of total revenues, and it is estimated that enforcement of the tax costs the federal government 65 cents for every dollar it raises.  
• According to the Joint Economic Committee, in this century, the death tax has reduced stock of capital in the economy by $497 billion, a 3.9 percent reduction (The Economics of the Estate Tax, December 19, 1998). 
• Family businesses could better use their resources to modernize equipment, expand operations, and create new jobs, rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for lawyers, accountants, and insurance to deal with the death tax. 
• Through this onerous tax, the federal government is sustaining a public policy that undermines the fundamental principles that our nation supports: hard work, savings, and fairness. 
• We believe that death should not be a taxable event. So we want to help the United States Congress continue the good fight to enact legislation that eliminates this onerous and unfair tax.

 Now is the time to ELIMINATE THE DEATH TAX!

A Senate vote is scheduled during the first few weeks of June 2006. Please contact your U.S. Senator by calling the U.S. Capitol switchboard (202-224-3121), and tell them:

• Please pass all measures and/or procedures necessary to get to a floor vote on repeal on the death tax. Then, vote to repeal the death tax.
• And realize that the deficit would improve with the elimination of the death tax, which is an encumbrance to capital stimulation.

Or, click below for a letter you can fax to your Senator(s).

Contact FLA lobbyist Frank Stewart for more information: 703-549-0347, FMS@Washington-Resource.com