So much value is destroyed by this form of taxation. It's inherent in having to liquidate much wealth in a short period of time. There should be a way to match the time scales better, as opposed to forcing a company to go public. Like putting non-voting shares into escrow and allowing them to be sold over years or decades.
This would come with the loss of taxes as businesses go under, but at least some offsetting increase from successful businesses that are allowed to continue operating.
Plus the federal estate tax only starts at $15M for an individual and $30M for a married couple, so it has no effect on what most would consider a "small" business.
Most people on this forum would be served well (or at least their heirs) by spending a few thousand on an estate lawyer to prevent their heirs from having to waste time in probate court.
My concern with estate taxes is, like I sid, the potential destruction of functioning businesses-- just what was discussed in the article.
I know the tax code has provisions to permit an extension of up to fourteen years for payment. There's a non-tax-deductible interest expense, though. A business with low margins might not be able to absorb that expense even over a 14 year time window.
In the end I'm probably thinking too theoretically. Perhaps there are no real businesses large enough to exceed the estate tax exemption that haven't otherwise planned for succession. I may just be getting "the feels" about theoretical jobs being destroyed in service of taxation.
re: small business
In my mind, at least, a business w/ a $30 million capitalization is a small business. Where I am (rural Ohio) a decently-sized family farming operation could hit that $30M cap (with land prices being what they are now). That's between 1,500 and 2,000 acres of farmland at market price. That doesn't take into account potentially inflated valuations as a result of datacenter speculators. In my county we've seen a Meta datacenter project pay 10x market value for farmland (resulting in skewed property tax valuations across the entire county).
We're around the same age and likely have similar memories. I poured over Radio Shack catalogs and weekly ads when I was a kid. When my family went to the local mall I'd make a beeline for the Radio Shack and play w/ the various computers there until my parents pried me away.
When I started doing PC tech work (in rural Western Ohio in the late 90s) it was always an option, no matter how far out in "the sticks" you were working, to drive to a Radio Shack for emergency parts. They might not have exactly what you needed, and you'd probably pay a hefty price, but you could get the job done.
That ubiquity definitely left an impression on IT technicians of my generation. I was recently doing some work w/ a legacy system that called for some serial gender-bender/null modem cables. Not having any handy I had to improvise with some DE-9 to RJ-45 hoods and creative crimping to get what I needed. A cow-orker commented "We used to be able to just go to Radio Shack when we needed stuff like that in a hurry."
Few things impress me more than someone using shell sizes correctly :-)
I considered saying "8P8C" for the jack, as well. >smile<
Sounds like my childhood. Remember the Tandy TRS-80 CoCo? I do. :)
A common BASIC program I'd write on new-to-me computers was a FOR/NEXT loop to print all the characters in the character set. I remember discovering the color semigraphics characters in the CoCo character set and being weirded-out. I'd never seen anything like that on any of the other machines I'd ever used.
I snared a CoCo2 a few years ago so I could re-live a few of those memories (and explore the machine with actual documentation).
Radioshack catalog archive in case anybody missed it:
OTOH, some items were surprisingly cheap. A couple years after college, I had a small business running out of a spare bedroom making temperature monitors and there was a shielded audio cable with connector that I used for the sensor. Radio Shack's price was about $1.50 each but all the "real" parts houses were at least 5x that.
As an engineer my boss will approve $80 for a single resister after overnight shipping if that is what I need. The factory is buying the resisters a reel at a time (or similar large quantities)
Are you serious? That's fkn brilliant!
But Radio Shack was also a pioneer in intrusive information gathering. They would always ask for your name and address at check-out, often practically insisting they couldn't complete the sale without it. I usually gave them "1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC" as my address. I hope Clinton and GWB liked those catalogs!
I worked there in the 80s. Early 80s was paper. Late 80s was terminal. Typing an R in the first name field bypassed this obligation IIRC.
Reason RS was so insistent is the company originally started via mail order and wanted this revenue stream to not dwindle....although it obviously did by the 80s.
PS: There's a business who still has their Tandy Leather sign out front in my city.
They had the same virtual console behavior as we see in Linux.
I had a friend who worked in one of the stores, and I scared the daylights out of him by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F4 on his cash register to get a login. After switching back to F1, he learned the scary trick himself. I have no idea why all of the gettys were enabled in /etc/inittab.
Edit: I had no idea about Pier 1 (rest in peace), the 1959 proxy battle for the family takeover, Tandy's sale of Pier 1 in 1966, Tandy's purchase of a controlling interest in the failing Radio Shack for $300k, Tandy's abrasive management style, or his early demise at 60 from a heart attack.
Peir 1 folded just as we entered the COVID pandemic.
Tandy had a Xenix license from Microsoft and shipped a version on their TRS-80 Model 16 and Tandy 6000 machines (both of which were Motorola 68000-based). It would be interesting to know how much of their own stuff they used internally. I have a recollection of a (potentially apocryphal) story the TRS-80 Model 1 had a "fallback" use as an in-store management computer if they failed to sell.
https://www.eetimes.com/sco-provides-free-unix-system-licens...
From memory, the two serial ports could run classic getty processes.
Here's hoping for the power of Hacker News.
I've not been very sympathetic to the demise of bricks & mortar retail since then.
i just learned there are about 100 Tandy Leather stores out there if you want to pay tribute
They sold a "1000-in-one" electronics kit that came with a book that would teach you all that you needed to know to get started with a lifelong addiction to electronics parts. My grandpa gave me one as a birthday gift one year, and thus began my early addiction to Radio Shack. ;)
I remember Enercell for batteries, Supertape for cassette tapes, Genexa TVs and VCRs, Archer TV/radio aerials and distribution systems, Micronta meters, and, of course, the Science Fair 200-in-1 electronic project kits.
The branch opposite my school had several "characters" amongst the staff who would amuse themselves by pelting you with dud resistors if you refused their entreaties to sign up to the Battery Club. A great place for nerdy teenagers to visit, but I can't imagine them actually ever having sold very much...
Fascinating guy!
HN rules.