Nothing weans conservatives from their addiction to the truth like striking up a conversation about the estate tax.
(Yes, here at TPM we still call it the ‘estate tax.’ Call it something else and your heirs will be paying the estate tax.)
Anyway, that truth bending tendency applies to more than just Republicans.
A little while back Robert Johnson (head of Black Entertainment Television) and a number of other wealthy black executives made a splash by calling for the repeal of the estate tax and arguing that it’s particularly unfair to blacks. The estate tax, the group’s ad claimed, “will cause many of the more than one million black-owned businesses to fail or be sold.”
So basically, just when blacks and starting to build up some real wealth, here comes Uncle Sam slapping them back down with the estate tax!
Well, the ad in question was packed with so many untruths and distortions that it’s hard to know quite where to start. But one-time Talking Points minion Josh Green does a pretty good job of dispatching all of them in this just published piece in the American Prospect.
And what about those million black-owned businesses that might bite the dust because of the dreaded estate tax? Josh had a economist at NYU run the numbers.
How many black-owned businesses are likely to face estate taxation this year? 223.
P.S. And, no, that’s not 223,000, that’s 223.
