I regret the error

by David Safier
I wrote a post about tax hikes, estate taxes and Tea Partiers. In it, I approximated the amount an estate has to be worth before it's taxed at $1 million.

A reader corrected me. A single person's estate has to reach $3.5 million before it's taxed. For a couple, it's $7 million.

The max was $675,000 in 2001. The Bush tax cuts edged it up every few years. If what I read is correct, the Bush cuts have the estate tax disappear completely in 2010 (really, really rich people probably want to hide from their relatives that year), then revert to the $1 million mark in 2011 — a bit of tap dancing necessary to keep the total cuts under the magic $1 trillion figure.

So when I looked across the street at the people carrying Taxed Enough Already signs, I should have asked myself, "Are they worth $3.5 million each?"

I regret the error.