Well then, to use friend inscrutable’s reasoning and terminology, they get taxed because the deceased was too much of a loser to convert all his assets into non-taxable stuff before they died and left it to someone. 
Nonsense, they have people for that sort of thing. We all them “Congress”, they call them whenever they like.
If you remove the parenthetical, that’s an argument for a capital gains tax of 0%.
The thing is, you can say that about practically any tax. The decedent would have worked for the initial $1000; why should he be penalized for working? Every tax penalizes something.
Whatever level of government you have, has to be paid for somehow. You’ve got to have a comparative argument at some point. Even if you’re a libertarian who believes all taxes are evil, if you’re gonna participate in a debate about taxes in the real world, you’ve got to make an argument that this tax is ultra-evil, compared to that other tax that’s only middlin’ evil.
If you can make that sort of argument about this tax, go for it.
Sounds reasonable, but remember, the inherited cash will be taxed again when it is invested to generate income.
Let’s turn it on its head. Person A starts a business and now earns $1,000,000 a year which of course he pays tax on. So in say 2015 he pays tax on $1 million of income. Person B inherits $1 million which of course he did no work for whatsoever. Why does it make sense for person B to get a tax-free windfall for contributing nothing to the economy while person A pays tax on the same amount of money?
It would seem that the way around this issue would be to have the cost basis of the investments transfer to the decedent. So that rather than getting 1 million never taxed money he gets $999,000 in unrealized capital gains that he will have to pay taxes on when he liquidates it.
The problem with this is that it requires that the heir know the cost basis of assets based on transactions that he didn’t make himself.
Taken to the ridiculous extreme, one could make the case that lottery winners should not be taxed. “I already paid tax on the dollar that I bought that lottery ticket with!”
Because you live in a country which protects you, has public services to serve you, and people who do things that’s impossible for you to do by yourself, you pay taxes to support that. The increase in value didn’t come about because you kept it, it came about because this country is growing and the value of commodities grows with it. Your family heirloom’s value is piggybacking on the value this country created and that’s why the government deserves to tax it
“I’m gonna make the deficit yoooge!”
I agree with that.
Consider:
If you win, say, a million dollars in a lottery, there was more than two million dollars in the pool, all contributed by post-tax dollars.
Lotteries have the lowest payouts of any legal gambling in the country, and worse than almost all illegal forms, too. The government juice is always over 50%. (Roulette, in comparison, pays the house just over 5%.)
Now of the less than 50% the “winner” gets paid, you want the house to take another 28% or so? WTF? In what world is this fair?
There was once an ancient king of Mesopotamia in Lagash called Urukagina.
He not only proposed just about what Trump and the Republicans are now doing, that king made it real. He cut taxes, and made many reforms, something not heard of even in those early days. So he became popular with his people, but the problem was that many had not figured out what was the sensible amount of how deep tax cuts should be before the consequences got too problematic. Also, most city people were not warriors.
What happened was that he king failed to get the support of the warrior classes, yes, those that also defended the city.
So, he had no army available and with no money to raise one when the conquerors came, the king had to flee and the people were conquered and forced to pay the invaders, so a harsh lesson learned. And it is clear that many republicans just do not know history.
I wonder now if Trump failed history because while he graduated he did it with no honors of any kind
Yeah I thought everyone learned about Urukagina’s ill planned tax reforms in grade 3. :rolleyes:
GIGO, while your argument is solid, your example is just… weird. I’m a history buff and I’ve never heard of that guy.
[
](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8833fe7d352d427b8717708646c7ddbf/trump-gives-putin-leadership):eek:
History-world.org
http://history-world.org/reforms_of_urukagina.htm
Myths of Babylonia and Assyria
By Donald A. Mackenzie
https://books.google.com/books?id=erhMCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT118&dq=Myths+of+Babylonia+and+Assyria++By+Donald+A.+Mackenzie+"against+the+invader"&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIkvCukdedyAIVga-ACh3OVAPT#v=onepage&q=Myths%20of%20Babylonia%20and%20Assyria%20%20By%20Donald%20A.%20Mackenzie%20"against%20the%20invader"&f=false
Funny thing, I became aware of that thanks to Larry Gonick Of course that only made me look more deeply about 15 years ago.
Of course that book only made me look more deeply about many historical subjects 15 years ago. But as my background is in Social Studies I’m still more interested on how information like that is bounced around in other spheres,. And as a curious note I have to report that I have seen that tale of Urukagina referenced by conservatives as a history that supports the idea of cutting taxes in a radical fashion.
Of course the right wing spheres of information do not tell their readers or viewers what did happen after those taxes were cut.
C’mon, there is no Gawddamn good reason to get rid of the estate tax.
The fact that even Trump has co-opted this stupid part of GOP orthodoxy is fuckin’ sad.
Well, I’d like to see it just taxed as regular income to the recipients.
I’d like to see a graduated Federal estate tax rate that hit 99% over $1 billion and 99.9% over $10 billion.
Why? Because, as one of them guys on Mt. Rushmore said:
[QUOTE=Teddy Roosevelt]
The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.
[/QUOTE]
People shouldn’t be able to inherit sufficient wealth to have a real effect on our political system primarily by virtue of their wealth.