A tax designed around my specific prejudice against the non-working scions of rich parents would have to do something to incentivize the accumulation of workpla

A tax designed around my specific prejudice against the non-working scions of rich parents would have to do something to incentivize the accumulation of workplace experience. So I'd probably tie any exemption on it to earned income. $0 just encourages avoidance of the tax entirely. Ideally, everyone should get the experience of working a low-wage job for unskilled labor between the ages of 16 and 21, and a job that barely makes ends meet between 21 and 25. It teaches you the unmitigated constant panic of being a responsible adult in the real world. If you have already walked your mile in poor-people's shoes, and you then go on to negatively affect other people's lives using your parents' money, then at least it won't be because of ignorance. So perhaps if you work at least 32 hours every week, your immediate exemption is median individual/household income minus your earned gross income, with an additional deferred exemption equal to your earned gross income, starting 7 years later and repeating every year until your death, but capped at 10 times median income for your filing status. As an example, here is the work history of a child of a very rich person--one who has a perfect aversion to paying the rich-kid tax: Year Age Filing Earned Immediate Deferred Income 1 18 single $15k $17k $0 $32k 2 19 single $16k $16k $0 $32k 3 20 single $17k $15k $0 $32k 4 21 single $18k $14k $0 $32k 5 22 single $20k $12k $0 $32k 6 23 single $45k $0 $0 $45k 7 24 married $55k $4k $0 $59k 8 25 married $60k $0 $15k $75k 9 26 married $63k $0 $31k $94k 10 27 married $65k $0 $48k $113k 11 28 married $67k $0 $66k $133k 12 29 married $68k $0 $86k $154k 13 30 married $0 $0 $131k $131k 14 31 married $0 $0 $186k $186k 15 32 married $0 $0 $246k $246k 16 33 married $0 $0 $309k $309k 17 34 married $0 $0 $374k $374k 18 35 married $0 $0 $441k $441k 19 36 married $0 $0 $509k $509k 20-38 37-55 married $0 $0 $509k/yr $9671k This is a reasonable model for someone who works wage labor before and while attending university, then gets a white-collar job after graduation. Assuming the parents are 25 years older than the kid, and will die at age 80, working for 12 years allows tax-free transfer of a total of about $12M while the parents still live. So that makes it easy to drop the exemption on any levied-at-death inheritance tax to $0. The fortunate child never has to live at less than the 50th percentile, yet still has a major incentive to work longer and earn more on their own merits. In this instance, "retiring" at age 32 instead of 30 would have likely capped the deferred exemption at $590k in year 21. Even working at minimum-wage jobs for 40 years eventually caps the deferred exemption amount.