Formosa's Wang pays whopping estate tax

Yung-Ching Wang, billionaire founder of Formosa Plastics Group, will pay an estimated US$313 million in estate taxes to the Taipei National Tax Administration, according to the Economic Daily News in Taiwan. The paper notes that Wang's inheritance tax is the largest ever, and by itself will cover almost two years of inheritance tax budgets set by the Ministry of Finance. Wang left an estate of NT$60 billion (US$1.88 billion). But after exemptions and an income tax rebate, "only" NS$20 billion (US$626 million) is taxable. For those Plastics Blog readers who are quick at math -- yes, the tax rate on that estate is a whopping 50 percent. The story notes that Wang died on Oct. 15, 2008, several months before Taiwan cut its inheritance tax rate to only 10 percent. The story notes that Wang's survivors will sell some of Wang's stock to pay the tax. Estate tax laws in the United States are going to be in the news this year. Congress and the Obama administration will have to decide how to deal with pending changes that could see the death tax rate drop to 0 percent, and then leap to 55 percent next year. You know the old joke about death and taxes? Well, I don't expect Washington to repeal either one.