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You pay taxes because you enjoy benefits in return for those taxes. Benefits like being protected by police, being cared for in hospitals, getting an education

You pay taxes because you enjoy benefits in return for those taxes. Benefits like being protected by police, being cared for in hospitals, getting an education in schools, etc. The government doesn't need your inheritance to provide all this. What they need is for big companies to pay taxes as well. So instead of taking my money by default when I die instead of it going to my children, they should start by making businesses and the ultra rich pay proper taxes.

exporectomy 5y ago
Yes, you enjoy benefits from paying money to the state. That's why we do it. Maybe ordinary tax could be reduced if it got more revenue from estates. I don't know. The point is not where the money goes, but where it doesn't go - as unearned windfalls to arbitrarily chosen lucky individuals who are often unequipped to manage it effectively.
- yossarian1408 5y ago
  Such a twisted view. If someone works hard their whole life, and wants their hard-earned (and already taxed) money/investments to give their children a leg-up, who are you to say no? So they waste half a million on a ritzy house, or spend a couple of months in Spain with their own kids. What's it to you?
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    Zoom out a bit and apply systems-level thinking. We all know that a small number of locally applied rules lead to complex emergent behavior. Millions of individual inheritance decisions have an impact. We can choose to believe that people, individually making self-interested decisions, aggregates into a net good, but I'm not exactly convinced based on whatever first principles are in play.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    I'm not saying no. I completely agree with you. You must have misread my comment.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    We can tell people the money goes to their kids, but tax it after the parent dies, so their feelings aren't hurt.
andrepd 5y ago
I disagree. A tax on (large) inheritances being passed to children who did not work for it is more legitimate than a tax on your labour. Ultimately you need to get the money from somewhere. I'd rather it come from: LVT, inheritance tax, luxury goods tax, etc, than from what it currently comes from: taxes on labour.

exporectomy 5y ago

Yes, you enjoy benefits from paying money to the state. That's why we do it. Maybe ordinary tax could be reduced if it got more revenue from estates. I don't know. The point is not where the money goes, but where it doesn't go - as unearned windfalls to arbitrarily chosen lucky individuals who are often unequipped to manage it effectively.

yossarian1408 5y ago
Such a twisted view. If someone works hard their whole life, and wants their hard-earned (and already taxed) money/investments to give their children a leg-up, who are you to say no? So they waste half a million on a ritzy house, or spend a couple of months in Spain with their own kids. What's it to you?
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  Zoom out a bit and apply systems-level thinking. We all know that a small number of locally applied rules lead to complex emergent behavior. Millions of individual inheritance decisions have an impact. We can choose to believe that people, individually making self-interested decisions, aggregates into a net good, but I'm not exactly convinced based on whatever first principles are in play.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  I'm not saying no. I completely agree with you. You must have misread my comment.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  We can tell people the money goes to their kids, but tax it after the parent dies, so their feelings aren't hurt.

andrepd 5y ago

I disagree. A tax on (large) inheritances being passed to children who did not work for it is more legitimate than a tax on your labour. Ultimately you need to get the money from somewhere. I'd rather it come from: LVT, inheritance tax, luxury goods tax, etc, than from what it currently comes from: taxes on labour.