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Tax avoidance is a perennial problem, to be sure. There's always an "arms race" between the taxers and the avoiders, but that isn't a reason not to have taxes i
by pcrh 9y ago
Tax avoidance is a perennial problem, to be sure. There's always an "arms race" between the taxers and the avoiders, but that isn't a reason not to have taxes in the first place.
- conanbatt 9y agoIn the context of evaluating a tax, the ability to avoid it and the difficulty to apply it is definitely one key design concept. A tax on people that eat their brocoli would be highly impractical!
- pcrh 9y agoYou're correct in that it's foolish to institute an uncollectable tax, but I don't think inheritance tax necessarily falls into that category any more than, say, capital gains taxes.
- conanbatt 9y agoIs paying for your kids education inheritance? Are pre-paid company contracts for a lifetime inheritance? etc etc. There are some definite difficulties in implementation. But even then, my argument is that it could be a really harmful tax if it could be applied at all.
- pcrh 9y agoThe evidence is that allowing large inheritances is harmful to society at large. It allows for an accumulation of economic influence within too few hands, and the creation of an entrenched elite. The "Founding Fathers" of the US were particularly opposed to it for this reason. One would have to balance the "harm" caused to the children of wealthy people for not inheriting wealth (mostly when they are around 50-60 yr old themselves), with the harm caused to society at large.
- conanbatt 9y agoWhat evidence? > One would have to balance the "harm" caused to the children of wealthy people for not inheriting wealth (mostly when they are around 50-60 yr old themselves), with the harm caused to society at large. I wonder if we could think of other examples of how harming a minority of people can be good for society at large. But regardless of the moral standpoint of the remark you said, you also have to account the harm it does to society to make people spend extra time hiding their wealth and spending it more frivolously.
- pcrh 9y agoMy point is that there's no obvious harm implicit in denying people an inheritance. They did nothing to earn it. There's no inherent right to be bequeathed wealth; that this is evident is that it is nigh on impossible to sue one's parents (or their estate) for not willing their wealth to you (in the US; under Napoleonic law, there is a right to inherit). Many people spend inherited wealth frivolously. Business acumen isn't known to be genetically determined, whereas political influence is certainly affected by wealth and pedigree, see George Bush the first and the second.
- sokoloff 9y agoIn the other direction though, there is inherent right (IMO). I have the right, in my pursuit of happiness, to make allocations of my lawfully earned money to my current needs, to my retirement savings, to my children's clothing and education, and other such pursuits and accounts as I see fit. There is harm to the donor to abolishing inheritance. I don't want to live in a world where "I farm this land, just as my father, his father, and his father for 5 generations has done." is not possible.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoSure but if we're going to live in the land of inheritance then we need to toss the ideas that "anybody can make it" or "I earned this." >I don't want to live in a world where "I farm this land, just as my father, his father, and his father for 5 generations has done." is not possible. Why not? A man works hard to support himself but allowing four generations of free-riders seems like a pretty bad idea. It strikes me as a sort of neo-monarchism. In the past we had royalty blessed by god and passed through blood and now we have the economic elite blessed by capital and passed through blood.
- dredmorbius 9y agoWhy should education be privately financed? Why should there be a need to privately pay for your children's basic (or university) education?
- conanbatt 9y agoThere isn't a need, there is a desire.