Give us whole truth about estate tax

After reading Long Grove Village President Maria Rodriquez's opinion piece about the estate tax, is it too much to ask for her to just be honest?

The 55 percent rate only applies to an estate value over an exclusion amount. The exclusion amount for 2009 was $3.5 million per person, for 2010 it's a moot point since there is no estate tax this year, and in 2011 it returns to $1 million per person. The "tens of thousands" of small and family businesses subject to the estate tax mentioned in the 2006 congressional study was the grand total over a 10-year period, not every year as implied.

The "survey" referenced in that same study claiming that 98 percent of heirs needed to raise funds to pay estate taxes has no statistical validity and was published in a 1995 book "Marketing to the Family Business Owners," subtitled "A Toolkit for Life Insurance Professionals," a book designed to talk people into buying life insurance.

Rodriguez claims "billionaires don't pay a dime in estate taxes," but for tax year 2003 estates of $10 million or more made up only 3.1 percent of the total returns filed but 39.4 percent of the total estate tax collected. Also, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, both mentioned, have been very vocal about their support for the estate tax, stating that they have benefited from the rules and stability of the United States and have an obligation to support it.

Rodriguez claims that the ones who pay are the little guys, but that's simply not true. Only about one out of 200 of deaths in 2009 will result in any estate tax whatsoever.

Finally, her implication that some people in poor distressed Long Grove might just kill themselves this year to avoid paying estate taxes next year is beneath an elected official and sounds more like a weeping Glenn Beck. Not what she should be aiming for.

Bruce Henke

Bartlett