3 ms·

>yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers'

>yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth - how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it? So you have it all backwards. The descendent are not entitled to the wealth of their parents or ancestors. The right to property (including disbursement through inheritance) is given to those that own it! The dollar I earn, I can do as a please with and has already been taxed.

bzbarsky 6y ago
This is very country-dependent. In a number of European countries, the children are in fact entitled to some minimal share of the wealth of their parents (in France this share is between 50 and 75%, depending on the number of children for example), and what Buffet and Gates are doing would be illegal, as I understand it.
- foobarian 6y ago
  I would not call 50-75% minimal :) Though I imagine you meant "minimum" - somewhat subtle difference.
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    The distinction is ... pretty tenuous in many cases (e.g. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/minimal https://www.dictionary.com/browse/minimal meaning 1). But yes, "minimum" may have been a better choice.
- ska 6y ago
  This sounds counter-intuitive. Are children really entitled to a fraction of all the wealth generated by their parents, or are they entitled to a fraction of the estate ? These are very different things.
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    This, again, varies by country and is complicated. As one example, according to https://www.germancivilprocedure.com/disinheritance-lawsuits-are-very-common-in-germany/ https://www.germancivilprocedure.com/disinheritance-lawsuits... (search for "Even lifetime gifts are relevant for the calculation of the Pflichtteil"): > German succession law orders that all lifetime gifts made by the testator within a period of ten years prior to their death is added to the value of the estate. Such gifts are thus also basis for calculation of the forced share. and a provision like that seems like a clear necessity to prevent people from working around the compulsory-share legislation by just giving their money away before dying. And yes, my understanding (which could be totally wrong!) is that this means that there's effectively a clawback provision on gifts in Germany. So it's neither "fraction of the estate" nor "fraction of total wealth generated" but a compromise "fraction of what the estate would have been if not for certain actions on the part of the parents". According to https://works.bepress.com/aaron_schwabach/3/download/ https://works.bepress.com/aaron_schwabach/3/download/ there are in fact such clawback provisions in various European countries (as of 2011, but I don't think that much has changed since then) with different details: time periods, whether you can claw back non-fungible goods from someone who purchased them in good faith from the gift recipient, whether children can officially sign away their rights to gifts at the time of the gift so they later cannot invoke the clawback provisions, etc, etc. Yes, from a US-or-UK common-law point of view this all seems fairly counter-intuitive. ;)
    - ska 6y ago
      Interesting, thanks.
josefx 6y ago
> The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth Define "miniscule". > how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it? Tax evasion 101
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Both Gates and Buffett have seemed to be following a quote from Buffett in the mid-80s. Warren aims to leave "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."
Mitzi 6y ago
>The dollar I earn, I can do as a please with and has already been taxed. Just chiming in for the 'has already been taxed' thing, as it is often brought up in opposition to taxing inheritance. No dollar is ever taxed 'finally', it's a continuous process that involves taxes in most steps. Say you earn a dollar, it gets taxed and 70 cents remain. You go to a store and want to use those 70 cents to buy something. You don't actually get 70 cents worth of product because of sales tax. (See also VAT.)

bzbarsky 6y ago

This is very country-dependent. In a number of European countries, the children are in fact entitled to some minimal share of the wealth of their parents (in France this share is between 50 and 75%, depending on the number of children for example), and what Buffet and Gates are doing would be illegal, as I understand it.

foobarian 6y ago
I would not call 50-75% minimal :) Though I imagine you meant "minimum" - somewhat subtle difference.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  The distinction is ... pretty tenuous in many cases (e.g. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/minimal https://www.dictionary.com/browse/minimal meaning 1). But yes, "minimum" may have been a better choice.
ska 6y ago
This sounds counter-intuitive. Are children really entitled to a fraction of all the wealth generated by their parents, or are they entitled to a fraction of the estate ? These are very different things.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  This, again, varies by country and is complicated. As one example, according to https://www.germancivilprocedure.com/disinheritance-lawsuits-are-very-common-in-germany/ https://www.germancivilprocedure.com/disinheritance-lawsuits... (search for "Even lifetime gifts are relevant for the calculation of the Pflichtteil"): > German succession law orders that all lifetime gifts made by the testator within a period of ten years prior to their death is added to the value of the estate. Such gifts are thus also basis for calculation of the forced share. and a provision like that seems like a clear necessity to prevent people from working around the compulsory-share legislation by just giving their money away before dying. And yes, my understanding (which could be totally wrong!) is that this means that there's effectively a clawback provision on gifts in Germany. So it's neither "fraction of the estate" nor "fraction of total wealth generated" but a compromise "fraction of what the estate would have been if not for certain actions on the part of the parents". According to https://works.bepress.com/aaron_schwabach/3/download/ https://works.bepress.com/aaron_schwabach/3/download/ there are in fact such clawback provisions in various European countries (as of 2011, but I don't think that much has changed since then) with different details: time periods, whether you can claw back non-fungible goods from someone who purchased them in good faith from the gift recipient, whether children can officially sign away their rights to gifts at the time of the gift so they later cannot invoke the clawback provisions, etc, etc. Yes, from a US-or-UK common-law point of view this all seems fairly counter-intuitive. ;)
  - ska 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks.

josefx 6y ago

> The kids of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are getting a miniscule amount of their fathers' wealth Define "miniscule". > how is that possible if supposedly they have a right to it? Tax evasion 101

sokoloff 6y ago
Both Gates and Buffett have seemed to be following a quote from Buffett in the mid-80s. Warren aims to leave "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing."

Mitzi 6y ago

>The dollar I earn, I can do as a please with and has already been taxed. Just chiming in for the 'has already been taxed' thing, as it is often brought up in opposition to taxing inheritance. No dollar is ever taxed 'finally', it's a continuous process that involves taxes in most steps. Say you earn a dollar, it gets taxed and 70 cents remain. You go to a store and want to use those 70 cents to buy something. You don't actually get 70 cents worth of product because of sales tax. (See also VAT.)