Metzenbaum Actually Against Higher Taxes!

As odd as it is to consider, the late Senator Metzenbaum was actually against taxes. This sounds odd to those of us who remember Metzenbaum as a politician who never met a tax he didn't want to increase. Oh, this is a case of being against personally paying higher taxes. This article from the Wall Street Journal details how Metzenbaum moved to Florida a few years before dying to avoid paying Ohio's excessive estate taxes. I wonder how the fools who voted him to four terms in the U.S. senate feel about his decision?

Though a lifelong Ohioan, the Senator moved to Florida in 2002, according to a declaration of domicile filed with the Broward County Clerk's office in 2003. In doing so, he avoided paying his home state's income tax (top rate: 6.55%).

More important as he neared the end of his life, the former Senator also saved his family from paying Ohio's death tax, which features one of the highest state rates (7%) and lowest asset thresholds – $338,333 – in the country. Florida famously has no income or estate tax, which is one reason other than the climate that it is home to so many northern-born retirees.

Howard Metzenbaum thus denied the state in which he lived most of his life a parting financial gift. But he has at least provided the rest of us with a teaching moment in tax policy. If a liberal lion like Metzenbaum is willing to relocate late in life to avoid his state's death tax, maybe living politicians in Ohio will better understand how their confiscatory tax laws are driving its citizens to warmer climes. Ed. Not likely.