The very concept of the death tax is absurd. In life, government will tax every dollar you make. When you die and want to pass your post-tax income onto your children, the government will again tax every dollar — this time at a rate of 35%.

It’s a double tax. Your income is taxed and then your post-tax wealth is taxed. It discourages the creation of wealth and punishes success.

Supporters of the death tax would like you to believe that only billionaires like Warren Buffet or Bill Gates are impacted. But that’s far from the case.

See, here’s the problem.

Farmer Joe is far from rich, but he owns many acres of land and pieces of equipment necessary to farm the land. All of the land and equipment may be worth millions of dollars, having been accumulated over the years. His technical worth may be millions of dollars but he hardly has that money laying around the house.

But government doesn’t care.

When Farmer Joe dies, he passes the land and equipment onto his son. Does his son have millions of dollars now? No. He has acres of land and equipment with which to continue farming. And yet he’s taxed 35% on the worth of the land and equipment.

How does he pay that tax? After all, he doesn’t have millions lying around. His father accumulated the land and equipment over time. But the government wants cold, hard cash. And it wants cash totaling 35% of the theoretical worth of the land and equipment. But Joe’s son doesn’t have the money. He has the land and equipment.

So in order to pay the tax, Joe’s son has to sell off land and equipment. Often that means not having sufficient land and equipment with which to continue farming. And without the money to buy it back, the farm goes out of business. All thanks to taxes.

And this situation isn’t limited to farms. Small businesses experience the same problem. So do people whose house may be theoretically expensive but were brought into the family generations ago.

As Jazz Shaw says:

The real reason to oppose the death tax isn’t that it’s an inefficient way to raise revenue or that it suppresses job creation and expansion. The main objection to such a tax is that it is simply wrong. (Or have we passed beyond the era when the words “right” and “wrong” have any meaning in government?)

When people work all their lives and accumulate wealth – with the long term goal of passing that wealth on to family, friends, or whomever they choose – they have achieved the most fundamental definition of the American dream. And the moment of their passing – generally just as a family is dealing with the grief of losing a patriarch or matriarch – has to be the worst possible time for Uncle Sam to come knocking with a bag and a gun.

And lastly, if it hasn’t been pointed out often enough already, the wealth has already been taxed repeatedly. There comes a point where enough is enough already.

But it’s never enough for Washington. The government will always want more and more. If it could, government would tax the air we breathe and legs we walk upon. It’s time to say, “Enough is enough.” It’s time to end the death tax.