Cold Collect


Two parents lost their child in Queens earlier this week. She lived only an hour, but was still taxed $50 under the so-called “death tax” in New York. I suppose some people will do anything to close that New York state deficit…

Earlier this year, a tycoon died “conveniently” before an estate tax was returned, saving his heirs a fortune:
Textile tycoon Roger Milliken avoided the taxman upon his death almost a century after his grandfather lost a landmark legal fight with the U.S. government over sheltering a fortune from the estate tax.

The 95-year-old Milliken, chairman of Milliken & Co., one of the world’s largest closely held textile, chemical, and floor-covering manufacturers, died in a Spartanburg, South Carolina, hospice on Dec. 30, less than 48 hours before a temporarily lapsed federal tax on multimillion-dollar estates was to be reinstated.

The tragedies here are both very sad – one family will have to pay pittance for a child they never got to know, and another man made a choice to sacrifice himself because the timing of his taxes would be burdensome. (Either way, the death tax repulses me.)

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