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"In this case, the beneficiaries, Nina Sundell and Antonio Homem, have paid $471 million in federal and state estate taxes related to Mrs. Sonnabend’s roughly $

"In this case, the beneficiaries, Nina Sundell and Antonio Homem, have paid $471 million in federal and state estate taxes related to Mrs. Sonnabend’s roughly $1 billion art collection, which included works by Modern masters from Jasper Johns to Andy Warhol. The children have already sold off a large part of it, approximately $600 million worth, to pay the taxes they owed, according to their lawyer, Ralph E. Lerner." This is the worst part of the article to me. Forced to sell your inheritance to pay the taxes on it... Seems ridiculous.

ska 7y ago
How else can you structure things then, without allowing this to be a loophole to avoid estate taxes entirely? Assuming you are rejecting the entire idea of estate taxes, I suppose.
justin66 7y ago
> Forced to sell your inheritance to pay the taxes on it... Seems ridiculous. I don't get it. Would it seem less ridiculous if we were talking about cash instead of art, and they were simply paying the taxes out of those funds? Or is it more of a "death tax bad" thing?
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > Would it seem less ridiculous if we were talking about cash instead of art Yes of course. Cash has no sentimental value. Only cash value. Possessions have both. I guess the same thing happens to people when they are forced to sell their grandmas wedding ring to pay off her inheritance taxes.
pesfandiar 7y ago
Seems like bad estate planning when the bulk of inheritance is illiquid rare assets, unless you think the tax itself is ridiculous which is a completely different topic.
- ska 7y ago
  Definitely. Someone with north of 1b in an estate should have had better estate planning, you would think.
munificent 7y ago
One of the most fundamental tensions in human society is this: 1. For a society to be just, we should be able to use the fruits of our labor to provide for our own children. 2. For a society to be fair, no should have an unearned advantage over another by virtue of being born to rich parents. Any society that picks one rule and discards the other leads to a hellhole. If you pick 1 you get game-of-thrones-style tyrannical dynasties who own all of the wealth and use the poor as their serfs. Pick 2 and you get a pseudo-socialist dystopia where children are separated from their parents and raised in government-funded creches. You can look at the inheritance tax rate as essentially the point the government picks on the continuum between those two extremes. Given the many many loopholes the wealthy have to avoid taxes on inheritance, I think the current rate is actually too low. If you look at this from the perspective of the beneficiaries, sure, "losing" $600 million sucks. But they never earned it in the first place. It's not like the had to work hard to choose their family. They still get something like half a billion dollars. That should be enough for them to scrape by. Meanwhile, think of all of the services that tax bill can provide for. College education for thousands of students. Healthcare for poor children. Environmental protection.

ska 7y ago

How else can you structure things then, without allowing this to be a loophole to avoid estate taxes entirely? Assuming you are rejecting the entire idea of estate taxes, I suppose.

justin66 7y ago

> Forced to sell your inheritance to pay the taxes on it... Seems ridiculous. I don't get it. Would it seem less ridiculous if we were talking about cash instead of art, and they were simply paying the taxes out of those funds? Or is it more of a "death tax bad" thing?

erikpukinskis 7y ago
> Would it seem less ridiculous if we were talking about cash instead of art Yes of course. Cash has no sentimental value. Only cash value. Possessions have both. I guess the same thing happens to people when they are forced to sell their grandmas wedding ring to pay off her inheritance taxes.

pesfandiar 7y ago

Seems like bad estate planning when the bulk of inheritance is illiquid rare assets, unless you think the tax itself is ridiculous which is a completely different topic.

ska 7y ago
Definitely. Someone with north of 1b in an estate should have had better estate planning, you would think.

munificent 7y ago

One of the most fundamental tensions in human society is this: 1. For a society to be just, we should be able to use the fruits of our labor to provide for our own children. 2. For a society to be fair, no should have an unearned advantage over another by virtue of being born to rich parents. Any society that picks one rule and discards the other leads to a hellhole. If you pick 1 you get game-of-thrones-style tyrannical dynasties who own all of the wealth and use the poor as their serfs. Pick 2 and you get a pseudo-socialist dystopia where children are separated from their parents and raised in government-funded creches. You can look at the inheritance tax rate as essentially the point the government picks on the continuum between those two extremes. Given the many many loopholes the wealthy have to avoid taxes on inheritance, I think the current rate is actually too low. If you look at this from the perspective of the beneficiaries, sure, "losing" $600 million sucks. But they never earned it in the first place. It's not like the had to work hard to choose their family. They still get something like half a billion dollars. That should be enough for them to scrape by. Meanwhile, think of all of the services that tax bill can provide for. College education for thousands of students. Healthcare for poor children. Environmental protection.