{"id":115802,"date":"2026-01-13T01:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/115802\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T01:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T01:03:07","slug":"impact-of-tax-avoidance-by-wealthy-on-america-sanibel-captiva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/115802\/","title":{"rendered":"Impact of tax avoidance by wealthy on America – SANIBEL-CAPTIVA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: Justin Schein\u2019s film \u201cDeath & Taxes\u201d will be shown on Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. at BIG ARTS, at 900 Dunlop Road, Sanibel. Following the screening, an in-person Q&A with him will be held. Tickets are $12. For tickets or more information, visit www.bigarts.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To the editor:<\/p>\n

Back when I was in college, I made an annual holiday pilgrimage from the icy Northeast to visit my retired parents on Sanibel, Florida. I\u2019d step off the plane, winter jacket under my arm, and inhale the warm, damp air as I walked down the jetway. At the end waited my bronzed father nervously pacing. He was eager to see me \u2014 and just as eager to get back to the car he\u2019d illegally parked at the curb. \u201cWelcome to paradise,\u201d he\u2019d say. For him, that was true, Sanibel was his paradise: sun, tennis, poker games with friends \u2014 and, most of all, low taxes.<\/p>\n

By most measures, dad had lived the American Dream. He grew up poor in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, the youngest son of garment workers. Through ambition and hard work, he rose to become one of the most powerful executives in America, serving in the 1970s and \u201980s as president of CBS Records International and later Sony America. That drive \u2014 to succeed, accumulate, and provide \u2014 was forged in childhood insecurity. He never wanted his family to feel the economic uncertainty he had known.<\/p>\n

In retirement, that same drive found a new focus: avoiding the estate tax, or what its critics called \u201cthe death tax.\u201d Moving to Florida, with its lack of state income and estate taxes, was the cornerstone of that plan.<\/p>\n

My mother was not enthusiastic. As a lifelong dancer who had performed with Martha Graham and on Broadway, she was making a profound compromise by moving to Sanibel. What she wanted was New York \u2014 studios, stages, energy. Still, she tried. And when my father saw how unhappy she was becoming, he spearheaded the funding of Schein Hall, a performance space at Sanibel\u2019s BIG ARTS Cultural Center, giving her \u2014 and the community \u2014 access to dance, music, and film.<\/p>\n

During my visits, mornings found me sleeping in while my mom taught tap class and my dad sat at his desk, performing a dance of his own \u2026 with the tax laws. His command of estate and trust law humbled even his accountants. In the afternoons, we\u2019d walk the beach, scanning for shells and talking \u2014 often about politics, clashing over Reagan-era \u201csupply-side\u201d economics. To him, high taxes discouraged work and ambition. He believed he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and that others could too.<\/p>\n

There was truth in his story \u2014 but also omission. After serving in the Navy at the end of World War II, he attended NYU and then Harvard Law School, both paid for by the GI Bill. That massive public investment educated a generation of (mostly white) Americans, helped them buy homes, and build generational wealth. Yet many beneficiaries came to see themselves as entirely self-made. That same postwar prosperity was fueled by marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans that reached as high as 90 percent. Government wasn\u2019t an obstacle to growth \u2014 it was a partner.<\/p>\n

For my father, the estate tax became the ultimate symbol of something \u201cun-American.\u201d After a lifetime of work and disciplined saving, why should his wealth be taxed again when passed to his heirs? Especially when, in his opinion, it had already been taxed once? (That, too, was not quite correct. His wages had been taxed, but the vast appreciation on his investments had not.)<\/p>\n

After more than a decade of snow-birding, our family reached a breaking point. In 2001, just weeks after 9\/11, mom decided that she could no longer spend the full winter in Florida and my parents separated. While mom moved into a small Manhattan apartment, dad drove south for the winter \u2014 alone. Giving up paradise \u2014 and its tax advantages \u2014 was unthinkable to him. To me, it felt like he had chosen lower taxes over his wife of forty years.<\/p>\n

Dad was at sea \u2014 having to cook and clean for himself \u2014 and he missed her terribly. So, after a difficult few months they reconciled. The compromise allowed my mother more time in New York while preserving their Florida residency \u2014 and the financial benefits for their heirs, including me. Now, as both a beneficiary of my father\u2019s careful planning and a parent myself, I feel deep unease about the impact of tax avoidance by the wealthy on America. That impulse led me to make my documentary, \u201cDeath & Taxes,\u201d which uses my family as a case study to explore these issues.<\/p>\n

The economic shift ushered in by Reaganomics reopened a divide between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else not seen since the Gilded Age. Today, the top 1 percent hold about 31 percent of the nation\u2019s wealth, while the bottom 50 percent hold just 3.5 percent. Even more troubling, the meritocracy that is at the core of America\u2019s uniqueness \u2014 and that benefited my father \u2014 is slipping out of reach. A 2017 study found that 90 percent of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents; for those born in the 1980s, that number falls to about 50 percent.<\/p>\n

Tax policy plays a central role. The system already favors investment income over wages, including lower tax rates and the \u201cstepped-up basis\u201d that allows accrued capital gains to disappear at death. The weakening of the estate tax, riddled with loopholes, further accelerates dynastic wealth \u2014 damaging democracy and depriving the country of revenue that could fund education, housing, and health care.<\/p>\n

I deeply miss my father and appreciate all that he left me, but the real question isn\u2019t just what we inherit, but what we choose to pass on. For me, it extends beyond financial security to democracy itself. As Justice Louis Brandeis warned, \u201cWe can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can\u2019t have both.\u201d<\/p>\n

A tax system that defends democratic values and allows the American Dream to endure is where that choice begins.<\/p>\n

Justin Schein<\/p>\n

Brooklyn, New York<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: Justin Schein\u2019s film \u201cDeath & Taxes\u201d will be shown on Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":{"0":"post-115802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}