I’ve never understood the opposition to inheritance tax. Could you not just agree to not tax the first, say 5oo million dollar inheratace (or any number you wish) and take everything else? While at the same time decreasing income tax by the same amount?
I mean… if Gates dies tomorrow, give his kids a half billion dollars, take the rest, and decrease our taxes. The superrich kids of superrich parents remain rich, and the rest of us get a break.
Would this work? Does anyone care what happens to their money after they are gone? They’re not really in the position to care about anything. And half-billionaiire superchilden should take care of their spooky beyond the grave concerns, yeah?
I totally agree, you cant take it with you, but while we’re alive we can sure do a lot better with the money than the government can in terms of increasing that end of the line wealth.
I suspect, however, in practice, the drive for one to accumulate wealth knowing that its all going to the government in the end would probably significantly diminish.
Not enough super-rich people to fill the coffers. Especially given that guys like Gates seem fond of large sums of their earnings to charitable causes instead of just passing it directly to their spawn.
In order to run the government, or even replace a significant amount from income taxes, from estate taxes, you’d have to not only tax the super-rich, but also the merely affluent. IMO, the value of estate taxes isn’t as a revenue-raiser, per se, but as a means of reducing inherited wealth, which can pose a danger to society if it becomes too prevalent. People of more modest means, by which I mean anyone who can’t afford more than one yacht, should by able to pass on the lion’s share of their wealth. Their heirs will still have incentive to work and make even more money.
That’s already how it works. The first $2 million is not taxable at the federal level, and it increases to $3.5 million in 2009. I think according to Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them, only a very small percentage of American estates are affected by the tax, 3%, according to this source, and that the whole “Family Farms be forcibly sold to pay huge estate tax bills” is a conservative myth.
I found it amusing that Bill Gates Sr, father of the Microsoft chairman, authored a book titled Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes
In the UK Death Tax as we call it, only affects the middle class - a bit over $500k
Those who have enough to pay it, and those who are not wealthy or smart enough to avoid it.
If one switched emphasis from income to death tax, then one would simply create a market where people sell products to avoid it.
The real reason why death tax works is because the people who allow it to be paid are slightly stupid will re-writers whose death is a joy to their relatives.
In the UK we get hit for 40%
Interestingly, you make much more by going for the average, rather than attempting to rape the extremes.
Taxation is about plucking the Goose - and geese are not particularly bright.
Won’t work. Unless an estates’ wealth is tied to real estate or a business then the money would be moved beyond the shores of the country attempting to take it. Which removes it from future taxation.
And for the record, Bill Gates is not leaving a large percentage of his estate to his offspring.
To me, the idea of unlimited inheritance is un-American. Decidedly more like medieval European. All we need add is primogeniture, and we will have empire building at the dark ages finest level.
I think the UK now has heavy estate taxes.
Perhaps there could be a simple “flat inheritance tax deductable” whereby anybody can inherit up to one million and after that it all goes to the treasury.
I’m fine with the idea of unlimited inheritance. I think it is a fundamental right to say who your assets go to after you die, and I just don’t see why the government has a right to take it. It makes it seem as though nothing is truly ours, just loaned from the government for the period in which we live. And I think that is anathema to property rights, what I feel is the possibly the single most important aspect of a truly free society.
Plus, from all the evidence I’ve seen the super wealthy actually divest a huge portion of their accumulated wealth. For example the Vanderbilt family had a reunion at the university that bears their name, and there wasn’t a millionaire in the group of many dozens of persons.