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Sweden also has zero tax for inheritance and gifts. What is "fair" is subjective. Inheritance is only by chance if you consider family ties to have zero value.

Sweden also has zero tax for inheritance and gifts. What is "fair" is subjective. Inheritance is only by chance if you consider family ties to have zero value. Building something over generations, for example a company or a farm, becomes difficult with high inheritance tax.

kergonath 3y ago
> Inheritance is only by chance if you consider family ties to have zero value. Well, no. The family in which you are born is effectively random. You don’t do anything to be born from your parents. Family ties have quite a lot of value, but material profit from them is not something you deserve as an individual, in the sense that it’s not something you get from your own efforts or qualities. > Building something over generations, for example a company or a farm, becomes difficult with high inheritance tax. That is the red herring we see when politicians want to manipulate the middle class into supporting something that is actually harmful to them. Inheritance tax is progressive like income tax. We can have a system that optimises for medium-size companies and businesses but limits the emergence of larger ones. When we talk about wealth accumulation that is harmful to society, we talk about tens of millions and up. Think multinational companies, not local farms. Sure, the story of the family farm or company that gets built over generation is nice. But these kinds are threatened by larger competitors that have more leverage, power, political connections (and so public subsidies), and tools to undercut them, not inheritance tax. They would be much better without these huge mega-farms we incentivise and that are impoverishing them. Same for small businesses in a different setting. A family business needs to be quite big to be threatened by inheritance taxes. But it just have to exist to be threatened by the huge companies that insufficient wealth redistribution helps thriving.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > Well, no. The family in which you are born is effectively random. I've seen some screwed up ideas on what "random" means before, but... c'mon. It's not random in any meaningful sense of the word. There are some uncomfortable truths that must be dealt with here, but to hide from them by saying that some arbitrary individual might've been born to a different family requires purely decadent levels of denialism. > We can have a system that optimises for medium-size companies and businesses We can't. Because even the tiniest businesses and farms are already multimillionaire levels. Medium-sized are far larger still. If you set these taxes to avoid harming those, the thresholds for taxes to be applicable would be so bizarrely high that we'd all laugh and shake our heads. Inheritance taxes are tools designed to teach the middle class to not bother trying, because the lifetime it would take to accumulate enough wealth to set the grandkids up to do well will see it all taken by the state. They're harmful to the middle class, and not the billionaires. The billionaires are still young enough to find some place or mechanism to avoid the inheritance tax. They're beyond it. It's the lesser folk that can't avoid it. But I guess it's not all bad, even if your great-grandchildren have crippling levels of student debt, at least they can sleep well at night knowing that it helped purchase JDAM bombs for Sudanese weddings.
- ftrobro 3y ago
  Your birth is effectively random, but the inheritance might be very much intentional. Parents might choose to build something for generations to come rather than spending everything they earn on themselves. > Inheritance tax is progressive like income tax. ... > Think multinational companies, not local farms. ... > A family business needs to be quite big to be threatened by inheritance taxes. Depends on which country you're referring to. In Sweden before 2005 inheritance tax was a flat 30 % for any inheritance above $60k. Which meant that children would need to pay a lot of money in taxes just to keep the house they grew up in after their parents passed away.

kergonath 3y ago

> Inheritance is only by chance if you consider family ties to have zero value. Well, no. The family in which you are born is effectively random. You don’t do anything to be born from your parents. Family ties have quite a lot of value, but material profit from them is not something you deserve as an individual, in the sense that it’s not something you get from your own efforts or qualities. > Building something over generations, for example a company or a farm, becomes difficult with high inheritance tax. That is the red herring we see when politicians want to manipulate the middle class into supporting something that is actually harmful to them. Inheritance tax is progressive like income tax. We can have a system that optimises for medium-size companies and businesses but limits the emergence of larger ones. When we talk about wealth accumulation that is harmful to society, we talk about tens of millions and up. Think multinational companies, not local farms. Sure, the story of the family farm or company that gets built over generation is nice. But these kinds are threatened by larger competitors that have more leverage, power, political connections (and so public subsidies), and tools to undercut them, not inheritance tax. They would be much better without these huge mega-farms we incentivise and that are impoverishing them. Same for small businesses in a different setting. A family business needs to be quite big to be threatened by inheritance taxes. But it just have to exist to be threatened by the huge companies that insufficient wealth redistribution helps thriving.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> Well, no. The family in which you are born is effectively random. I've seen some screwed up ideas on what "random" means before, but... c'mon. It's not random in any meaningful sense of the word. There are some uncomfortable truths that must be dealt with here, but to hide from them by saying that some arbitrary individual might've been born to a different family requires purely decadent levels of denialism. > We can have a system that optimises for medium-size companies and businesses We can't. Because even the tiniest businesses and farms are already multimillionaire levels. Medium-sized are far larger still. If you set these taxes to avoid harming those, the thresholds for taxes to be applicable would be so bizarrely high that we'd all laugh and shake our heads. Inheritance taxes are tools designed to teach the middle class to not bother trying, because the lifetime it would take to accumulate enough wealth to set the grandkids up to do well will see it all taken by the state. They're harmful to the middle class, and not the billionaires. The billionaires are still young enough to find some place or mechanism to avoid the inheritance tax. They're beyond it. It's the lesser folk that can't avoid it. But I guess it's not all bad, even if your great-grandchildren have crippling levels of student debt, at least they can sleep well at night knowing that it helped purchase JDAM bombs for Sudanese weddings.
ftrobro 3y ago
Your birth is effectively random, but the inheritance might be very much intentional. Parents might choose to build something for generations to come rather than spending everything they earn on themselves. > Inheritance tax is progressive like income tax. ... > Think multinational companies, not local farms. ... > A family business needs to be quite big to be threatened by inheritance taxes. Depends on which country you're referring to. In Sweden before 2005 inheritance tax was a flat 30 % for any inheritance above $60k. Which meant that children would need to pay a lot of money in taxes just to keep the house they grew up in after their parents passed away.