Indy/Dem/whatever US Senate wannabe Brian Bengs is out on facebook crowing about a passage in a recent SD Searchlight Article how “he wants to deny the majority.” Like that’s a good thing. And in at least one case, he wants to deny the vast majority of South Dakotans something they’ve weighed in on already – freedom from the inheritance tax.
South Dakotan’s distaste for the inheritance tax a.k.a., the Death Tax, is long on the record. In fact, there was even a ballot measure to outlaw the death tax in the year 2000 to repeal and outlaw the death tax. At the ballot in November 2000, it passed on a vote of 80.13 to 19.87. Less than 20% of voters said they want to be taxed upon their demise.
Yet, with apologies to the Beatles, Brian Bengs wants to tax the pennies on your eyes.
In Washington US Senator John Thune has long championed getting rid of the Death Tax at the federal level, and has gone into great detail about how it affects everyday South Dakotans, as he did in this column from 2025:
Death tax proponents talk as if it only affects the extremely wealthy, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The death tax can sweep up those who have very little money in the bank. Take for example a family farm or ranch, which are often cash-poor businesses. They might have substantial-looking assets on paper, but the vast majority of that is land and farming equipment, and a small fraction of it is money in the bank.
So what happens when a farmer or rancher dies and his estate is subject to the tax? There’s a very good chance that his liquid assets – in other words, the cash that he has available in the bank – won’t come close to covering the tax bill from the federal government. The only alternative for his heirs in that case may be to start selling off land or farm equipment to pay the tax. They may be able to keep the farm – just a smaller version of it – or they may have to sell it off entirely. It’s the same plight that many ranches and small businesses face as well.
(It’s worth noting that Thune has been supported in his efforts by Senator Mike Rounds, who Bengs seeks to remove from office.)
While Thune and Rounds have been talking about ending the death tax once and for all, Brian Bengs thought differently, and wrote how he actually wants to penalize those who inherit things.:
Currently, the tax system rewards passive income from capital—dividends, capital gains, and inherited wealth—more generously than income earned through labor. This disparity undermines the principle of meritocracy and fuels the rampant economic inequality that now exists.
…
Rebalancing the tax code to favor labor would mean increasing taxes on capital income to be more aligned with wage income, eliminating loopholes such as the carried interest exemption, and implementing wealth taxes or inheritance taxes that prevent dynastic accumulation of capital.
Read Bengs’ words from just a few months ago here.
He wants to “prevent dynastic accumulation of capital” in South Dakota? Is he kidding? Has he never talked to a family farmer who is just trying to keep the family farm operation intact?
It has long been accepted that the estate tax forces families to sell generational farms, ranches, and small businesses to pay the IRS. Because the inheritance tax counts the value of land along with cash – which forces families to break up farms. And is opposed by more than 80% of South Dakotans.
So when Brian Bengs talks about “denying the majority” – that’s what he’s referring to. He wants to deny the majority of South Dakotans things they’ve voted on decades ago because it doesn’t fit with his liberal Bernie Sanders sensibilities.
His true colors are showing. Voters need to be aware.
Everyone who expects to inherit more than 15 million needs to rise up!!! Won’t someone think of those poor souls, they can barely rest in peace when their 16th million that they are passing down gets taxed.
The Democrat Socialist has entered the race. Sounds like he wants to tax it all and redistribute other people’s money with his socialist friends.
As opposed to Oligarchs who want us to be modern serfs. Sounds like you’re spit shining their boots already.
I’m talking about South Dakota? What world you living in?
Sweet simple child. I’m talking about SD and the US, but if you’ve lived like an ostrich and only watch Fox News, I suppose you’d be ignorant.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycast/oligarchy-open-what-happens-now-us-forced-confront-its-plutocracy
Pat, it’s 1st and 10, a Hail Mary is not the play yet.
Polling would indicate that Rounds sycophants should be troubled.
“In Washington US Senator John Thune has long championed getting rid of the Death Tax at the federal level…” That is certainly true. And it bites.
Let’s be clear about this… it’s NOT about family farms or small business. That is one of the biggest lies in politics. The exemptions now are already huge. ($15 million for single/ $30 million per couple). What Thune is talking about is raising that exemption amount even higher so that guys like Elon Musk and his heirs NEVER pay taxes. Ever.
They don’t pay while they are alive, because there is no need to sell their stock or businesses and report capital gains. They can just borrow against it. Then, with Sen. Thune and Sen. Rounds help – their heirs get to spend that fortune without paying taxes either. For generation after generation. It’s radically unfair to the rest of us who will be paying the taxes, so they don’t have to.
So please… don’t dump on the middle class and act like it’s all for the benefit of small farms and businesses. It isn’t. We know it’s just payback for the millions they get in donations from billionaires.
No, they won’t be eliminating your tax burden any time soon. But they’re so very concerned about the welfare of these poor little rich kids.
Jealousy is ugly.
Why do liberals hate people who are successful in life.
Everyone pays taxes, because everything is taxed.
From 1973 to 2018 I bought a minimum of a ounce of gold a month. To secure mine and my families future. I’ve never invested in 401 as I saw no future in it. I have zero debt, and the only thing I have my name on is my truck. The gold was never and never will be taxed. I paid for six kids and nine grand kids college education. Seven of my grandchildren serve in the national guard to get a huge discount on college. Being raised in conservative household’s they learned you have to work and sacrifice in life to achieve. When I die my kids will get what’s left, grandchildren already received theirs.
23 years in the military, 10 years owning a business, 10 years as a educator.
I’ve paid enough taxes since 1967.
RLTW
Basic common sense is not “jealousy”. Try arguing the issue, for a change. “Everyone pays taxes” doesn’t quite cut it. Stupidity… now that’s ugly.
So what you’re saying is that Bengs’ proposal wouldn’t affect you anyway? And neither does the big bad Death Tax? Because you don’t have $30 million. Thune’s championing of that is only a ploy to get poor republicans to vote for stuff to benefit (extremely) rich republican donors.
By the way, stock market has done way better than gold over the past 30 years.
“Poor” was the wrong choice of word. “Less well off”, perhaps.
I was brought up in a world of common good. You were brought up in self interest
It IS pure jealousy. They are green with envy against anyone successful.
They covet.
Well trumpeted, Elk.
As soon as I read the thread title, I knew the resident moron, aka elk, would jump in like the babbling idiot he is.
This post was brought to you by the Oligarchy. Everything will be ok as long as you know your place.
Bangs is a socialist I’m convinced
He’s an opportunist
We’d all be so much more receptive to a death tax repeal, if the wealth class were not so adept in avoiding taxation on property by tying it up as collateral in bogus loans, and the other leverage tricks only the wealth class has sufficient wealth to accomplish. When you see the full range of actions that allow the long-term accumulation of massive multigenerational wealth, the repeal of the death tax looks like the frosting on a cake that has already been eaten.
There are things you can do to accumulate wealth
spend less than you earn
work your way through a public college
buy real estate cheap, and use it as a rental property, so the tenants pay the mortgage (in fact, that’s the way to acquire real estate without paying for it yourself)
or buy it cheap fix it up and flip it
Two of the ways the wealthy classes have avoided inheritance taxes were to (1) skip generations, don’t leave money to your kids, leave it to the grandkids, so it only changes hands every 50 years instead of every 25 years, and (2) gift it to them year by year, with each gift just under the gift tax exclusion.
thank you dave ramsey. take your debt snowball and make yourself a debt snow cone.
the wealth class loves hiding its grift in the shame and guilt they can heap on those they’ve screwed, for being newly poor and newly screwed probably by their own deficiencies, not by us “good examples.”
Buying real estate to rent back to people surely is a way to make money on other people’s labor, but it is inherently not possible for everyone to do. Not everyone can be a landlord, because who would rent from them?
Spending less than you earn is a great idea if your monthly expenses don’t eat up all your monthly income–something increasingly common with even the top half of earners.
It’s no longer the 1980’s, when even factory workers and wage laborers could own a home and support a family. You’re out of touch.
Man, if only there was a historical precedent for what happens when too much wealth is hoarded by too few. Surely this has happened once or twice and maybe a handful Presidents, most recently in the 1900s and 1930s, had enough foresight to see what happens and tried to remedy this imbalance?
Nah, let’s have modern day Dukes, Earls, and Viceroys. We’ll call em CEOs, nepobabies, and innovators. Totally different, trust me bro.
Evidence that families have had to sell generational farms to pay an estate tax is anecdotal with no evidence it actually happens. Even with the increased values of farmland over the last 25 years, no generational farm is valued at $25 million in SD.
Given ag land at between 5 and 12 thousand an acre, do some math. $10k an acre times 160 acres (a quarter), is $1.6 million per quarter of ground. A farm with 16 quarters would be over $25k. There are quite a few generational farms in eastern South Dakota that would meet that description.
Oops $25 million, not $25k
Well, I think the government should think twice about taxing the hard earned money of folks making $50,000 or $100,00, before eliminating the taxes of those worth thirty million on up to a trillion dollars. Why are they the priority?
Imagine how much wealth you could accumulate if you spent your time making money and instead of complaining
If one was alive since the birth of Christ and made a thousand dollars a day, they still wouldn’t have made a fraction of what Bezos and Musk have.
Those simping for the uber-wealthy either have zero idea about the ramifications of long term wealth inequality, or they don’t care about others (especially heinous individual if they claim to be a Christian as well).
Isn’t ENVY one of the deadly sins. Many in here have their envy cup running over.
And pride, gluttony, wrath, greed, lust and sloth.
And speaking of Trump… you excuse all of his behavior but somehow still manage to preach to the rest of us about “deadly sins”?
Is it envious to want social security funded? Is it envious to know the dangers of hypercentralized wealth? I’d say no.
Furthermore, say with a straight face that Musk, Besos, Zuckerberg, etc., don’t suffer from Avarice, Lust, Wrath, and Pride.
Yeah. What’s wrong with poor people? Why don’t they just buy more money? Are they stupid?
I have been poor and lived in poor neighborhoods.I have seen it.
Intergenerational poverty has a cause and that cause is behavior.
They drop out of school, have babies out of wedlock, commit crimes, etc
There is a life path which had a high success rate. Do them IN ORDER:
1. do not commit crimes, do not use drugs.
2. stay in school, at least long enough to get a high school diploma.
3. get a job
4. get married and stay married
5. buy a house (build savings and credit)
6. don’t have children until completing steps 1-5
This life plan actually WORKS and you will end up middle class or higher. Deviation from this plan will keep you on the bottom
for your whole life. I have met lots of poor people. I learned that every single one of them has at least one life decision which kept them poor. They dropped out of high school, used drugs, (including nicotine and alcohol) had babies out of wedlock, had criminal records, bad credit, etc. There was always a reason and they did it to themselves.
All I read from your “lesson” is a justification for ignoring a huge bottom layer of society’s poverty victims because they screwed up and didn’t follow your “plan” in the prescribed manner.
Every manufacturer has bastions of lawyers creating specific usage definitions designed not for the benefit of the purchaser, but to keep the company out of liability if their product causes injury during a range of normal uses.
You justified your tunnel-vision prosperity-preaching clearly. No need to keep on about it. You have “done your duty” and let yourself off the hook.
Not long ago, I asked AI to calculate the total value of every home in ND, SD and WY. The answer was approximately 225 billion dollars.
Our senators would give that one family… Elon Musk and his heirs… yet another tax break that EXCEEDS that amount. If you object, then you are accused of being “jealous”. Or you’re a “socialist”. Because that’s all they’ve got. They cannot argue the merits of this atrocity.
As a result of efforts like this, Washington politicians will have to spend millions in political ads to convince you that they still care about you… everyday Americans. Of course, Elon will be paying for many of those ads. And a ground game operation. Over $100 million in donations just this year. (Obviously, a good investment.)