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Here's how this happened as I understand it. The original founder of the guardian, Taylor, ran it like a business. While today journalism struggles to make mon

Here's how this happened as I understand it. The original founder of the guardian, Taylor, ran it like a business. While today journalism struggles to make money, in the 1800s news was lucrative. In his will, Taylor carved out a sweetheart deal (right of first refusal) to sell the paper to CP Scott, a progressive Liberal politician, and also his nephew. After running the paper for many years, CP Scott's will named his two sons to inherit. Both of whom worked as editors on the daily. In a freak turn of events, both CP Scott and one of the sons died within a few months. The remaining son was concerned about paying double for the hefty inheritance tax at the time ("death tax"). The death tax could be so large as to force a sale of the paper, to create liquidity to cover the tax. I guess it was a tax on unrealized gains! The remaining son, John, cleverly found a workaround to avoid the silly death tax: by renouncing his ownership and transferring the business to a Trust. Since he worked at the paper as editor, giving up ownership was a clever tradoff that actually gave him de facto tenure as editor, by making his day job more stable. This is all to say: the guardian became a nonprofit-like trust at a point in time it was already a stable business, with capital to self-finance. This was not a case of a independently wealthy businessman creating a foundation to create a paper from scratch (like many created universities). The Scott trust was created by journalists for journalists, at a unique point in time where journalists had money to self-finance. Motivated not by some idealistic vision but by a more practical desire to avoid a hefty tax on unrealized gains.

lifeisstillgood 2y ago
>>> The Scott trust was created by journalists for journalists, at a unique point in time where journalists had money to self-finance Where is the trust created by coders for coders at a time uniquely profitable for coders?
- mushufasa 2y ago
  Honestly things like this can also be an argument FOR crazy high death taxes. Something similar happened in a history podcast I heard about Porche, which is still owned by the original family. At one point, germany told them their tax on ownership gains is 90%. So instead, they decided they would just re-invest into the business R&D to write off the taxes instead. That gave us the invention of Porche's Racing team. source: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/porsche-with-doug-demuro https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/porsche-with-doug-demuro
  - laborcontract 2y ago
    You can get unintended consequences from this, like forcing the increase of nepotism. If you look at South Korea, for instance, the Chaebol, despite facing some of the highest inheritance taxes in the world, still have a grip on power. How? You keep the kids in management, you encourage lots of cross holdings between corporations so that even though the kids’ share falls, you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes that is horrible for shareholders and innovation as a society. That said Porsche indeed is an exceptional company in many ways in both the innovative end as well as their holdings structure.
    - robocat 2y ago
      Strong negative incentives create weird workarounds. > you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes Do you have any links that explain this? I'm planning to visit South Korea so understanding some of the politics is interesting...
      - laborcontract 2y ago
        The following links here are a good place to start. Elliott's activist letter to Samsung: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Press-Release-and-Letter.pdf http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Press-Relea... Elliott's presentation: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Presentation.pdf http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Presentatio... Elliott famously disapproved of the Samsung C&T merger, which ultimately went through. The Korean media demonized Elliott for trying to reform the company. It was an eye-opening experience seeing how Samsung effectively captured Korea both politically and through the media. McKinsey Report (ctrl-f: "korea discount") https://www.mckinsey.com/kr/~/media/mckinsey/locations/asia/korea/our%20insights/koreas%20next%20s%20curve%20a%20new%20economic%20growth%20model%20for%202040/koreas-next-s-curve-a-new-economic-growth-model-for-2040.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/kr/~/media/mckinsey/locations/asia/... Bloomberg report on the Korea discount: https://archive.md/eBJdl https://archive.md/eBJdl FT Report about cross shareholding: https://archive.md/eYXGM https://archive.md/eYXGM For all claims of Korea's dynamism, it's still seen as investment rat poison and it's telling that it's still considered an "emerging market" by MSCI. Public markets aside, SK's venture capital scene is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.
- vermilingua 2y ago
  They exist? This is called FOSS and some outfits are even able to offer paid employment.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    One can imagine trusts devoted to open source. (They probably exist in some form.) But that probably means that modest amounts of money are distributed to a vanishingly small number of coders based on, likely, the preferences of some executive director. In general, it's fairly clear that jobs for open source developers is generally more effective than charity of various kinds which is subject to change at any time. (OK, jobs are too but that tends to be less related to political, etc. winds.)
  - Centigonal 2y ago
    FOSS is not a monetary instrument?
    - koolba 2y ago
      A commit bit may not be liquid, but you can earn from it. There’s tons of companies that would pay for prioritization of their desired FOSS work.
  - eru 2y ago
    There's also the Ethereum foundation, if that's your jive.
- aorloff 2y ago
  Tiny little businesses that you never hear about
- robocat 2y ago
  We build open-source trust-equivalents (foundations) with valuable intellectual property on the balance sheet instead of crude money. However, is Mozilla a money oriented coder trust? If you've had any experience with small trusts, they often get captured by self-interested people. The Scott Trust seems to stand out from others with its outcomes.
akoboldfrying 2y ago
Fascinating! (I do find some irony in the fact that a majority of Guardian readers these days would abhor attempts by rich businessmen to dodge taxes.)
- ghaff 2y ago
  Charitable trusts, depending on the type, often/usually provide shielding from various types of taxes. That's not intended to be a cynical statement--the end result may well still be positive for society--but nonetheless it's one mechanism by which at least relatively affluent people can keep profits out of the hands of the government. It happens at much smaller scale than in this case as well.
- Angostura 2y ago
  As a Guardian reader, the idea of a wealthy person placing their money in a charitable trust - that actually does valuable work, rather than handing it to their children seems entirely reasonable
  - hk__2 2y ago
    > ... a wealthy person placing their money in a charitable trust - that actually does valuable work, rather than handing it to their children Isn’t it money that should have gone to the State here, rather than the children? They didn’t do the trust not to give money to their children, but rather to avoid taxes.
    - vidarh 2y ago
      Some portion of Guardian readers might see the state as the main provider of benefits to society, but I very much doubt most would. Guardian is a (in the European sense) liberal paper, with a readership ranging from the centre and toward the left, with a large proportion along that entire range being totally fine with non-state organisations structured for the public benefit. You'll also find plenty who look on the state with suspicion to outright hostility and would actively prefer if more businesses had ownership structured this way, whether or not the handover of wealth that creates them "avoids taxes".
timewizard 2y ago
> While today journalism struggles to make money It rather depends on what you mean by journalism. I suspect your definition is true to the Guardian's apparent aims, publishing well researched truths to an interested population. What was being published in the 1800s was most certainly not that; instead, being very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.
- eru 2y ago
  > [...] very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today. They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so.
  - chgs 2y ago
    Lucrative doesn’t always mean monetary terms.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    They're exceptionally lucrative for the people who can get their viewers to buy their memecoin and send donations to own the outgroup.
    - eru 2y ago
      Memecoins are a very, very small part of the overall economy. Much smaller than journalism used to be in its heyday.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Boris Johnson was paid more by the Telegraph (£220k) to write one column a week than he was as Foreign Secretary at the same time. Propaganda is lucrative.
  - FabHK 2y ago
    > They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so. Probably not as lucrative as the despicable academic publisher parasites.
russellbeattie 2y ago
In a post about why it's good thing to have a paper that's not owned by the super wealthy, you insist on using the term "death tax" - a right-wing pejorative - instead of just sticking with inheritance tax. The incongruity of this never crossed your mind?
- chgs 2y ago
  He seems to think that the independence of the guardian is a bad thing. It’s clear from his post that we need higher inheritance tax, and wealth tax in general, especially on unrealised gains.
  - thworp 2y ago
    > especially on unrealised gains. Right, absolutely brilliant idea. You live prudently, save some money every month and invest it (stocks, bonds, whatever). Due to factors entirely outside your control like a stock market bubble or an interest rate drop, the $50k portfolio you built over 30 years is now worth $70k. Your unrealized $20k gain is taxed at 10% for easier math. You don't have $2k cash on hand and are forced to sell some of your portfolio to pay the tax. Next year, there is a crash. You now have just $40k in assets. But there is a gradual recovery, and the year after it's back to $50k. You now owe another $1k. Sound good?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  The glaring incongruity is that the Guardian exists because someone used trusts as tax avoidance.
tempfile 2y ago
> I guess it was a tax on unrealized gains! Inheritance taxes invariably are. The recent UK controversy around farm land inheritance was the same.
- pjc50 2y ago
  That was definitely a case of people buying up land purely for the IHT value and then doing some toy farming on the corner to get the exemption. I feel like a lot of these cases could be avoided if people wanted to structure their family business like a business and gradually transfer control to their children, rather than keep it as personal property right until the very last minute.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
>found a workaround to avoid the silly death tax I don't know if you're using the word "silly" sarcastically here, but if not, isn't this an example of this type of tax working exactly as intended? John still greatly benefited from his parents' work, and so did society at large to this very day.
- arp242 2y ago
  "Death tax" alone is already a very loaded way to describe inheritance tax. That said, having to pay inheritance tax twice over an organisation like this in a short span of time is rather unusual, and arguably, a bit "silly".
  - Lutger 2y ago
    It is very good example of political framing. It evokes the thought of tax as a punishment for dying, and its collection as a kind of harassment of the bereaved. So tax bad, case closed, no discussion. But of course, it is not death and loss that it taxed, it is rather the accumulated wealth being redistributed over both society at large and the heirs, in some kind of ratio. In favor of inheritance tax: the wealth somebody amassed has also been thanks to its participation in society, so it is only fair some portion of it goes back to society. The heirs played no part in it, so why should they get any, let alone all of it? Furthermore, inheriting wealth goes against the idea of meritocracy, and maintains inequality in an unfair way in modern societies. Why should inheritance tax not be 100%? Children often grow attached to the 'stuff' their parents have collected, be it things or land, houses or money. It seems unfair to take it all away from them, as they feel they already 'own it' merely by being their children. So inheritance tax is some kind of compromise. However, as each generation these days tend to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way (economically, spiritually), inheritance itself seems more and more like a thing of our tribal pasts. I imagine a future where there is no inheritance tax anymore, because the whole concept of inheritance will go away.
    - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
      But wasn't the "society" paid off by all the "living taxes" before the person died? Imagine having nothing, your parents dying, you, an eg. broke college student inheriting a 2 bedroom apartment, which is somehow worth $1mio, and you owe so much tax (that you can't pay) that you're forced to sell the apartment, the only place you've ever known. With 100% inheritance tax, i'd literally stop working as soon as i reached enough money to retire. Why work harder if it all vanishes when I die, and my hypothetical kids gain nothig? Or, more realistically, i'd convert stuff to cash and give it to them without the government knowing. Tax the income, close the loopholes, once the tax for something is paid, the rest should go to the person, the government has got its share, it has enough. And i'm saying this as someone who already lives in a country without inheritance tax (in most usualy cases).
euroderf 2y ago
A death tax is a tax on death. It's not that. It's a birth windfall wealth tax.
- zmibes 2y ago
  > A death tax is a tax on death. It's not that. It's a birth windfall wealth tax. weasel words if ever there was.
  - euroderf 2y ago
    Quite the opposite, thank you very much. "Death tax" sounds like cruelty compounded. And a birth windfall? It's all over the culture. Stupid people with inherited money and inherited power.
- Cpoll 2y ago
  Sure, and income tax is just a labor windfall wealth tax.
  - euroderf 2y ago
    To the extent that it reflects actual work, income is hardly a windfall. OTOH... Elon and Donald had gobs of cash drop in their laps, what's not to like about reasonable taxes on it ? Split it (say) 50-50 with society. Unless you have found an infant with a track record of accomplishment - and an investment strategy to match.
pyrale 2y ago
> This is all to say: the guardian became a nonprofit-like trust at a point in time it was already a stable business, with capital to self-finance. The same kind of logic was applied to two french newspapers: - Le canard enchaîné, created in 1915, specific status preventing sale of capital made in 1958. Motive was foiling an attempted takeover by another company. - Mediapart, created in 2004, trust made in 2019. They made the change deliberately in order to protect the newspaper's future. Both newspapers are doing well today, so I'm not sure this kind of thing is a product of its time and impossible to copy nowadays. However, both newspapers are producing quality investigative journalism, which most news media don't these days.
rzwitserloot 2y ago
"Death Tax"? What the heck are you on about? The dead aren't taxed, they can't, they are dead. What are you going to do to them as punishment if they fail to comply? Shoot the corpse? It's a tax levied on those who get a completely free/undeserved sudden windfall; in the sense that they did not do anything to obtain it and didn't even have to expose risk or pay for a chance. Most nations put pretty serious taxes on earnings from lotteries, and an inheritance is like a lottery where you didn't even have to pay for a ticket. There's no obvious objective truth about the idea of taxing inheritance. But calling it "silly death tax" is, oof. Idiotic. Cut it out.
- inanutshellus 2y ago
  Ah... Several other comments were complaining about "death tax", but until I read your post I didn't really get what their fuss was about.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Now my advice for those who die Declare the pennies on your eyes One of the punchier Beatles songs, good riff.
- ifyoubuildit 2y ago
  The inheritance will often have been arranged before the person dies, no? So they wanted to direct their assets (which were already taxed in myriad ways) but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them.
  - rzwitserloot 2y ago
    I pay sales tax when I buy something with money I have. That was already taxed. Huffing and Puffing about paying taxes when you do a thing _just_ because the thing you are doing, you do with money you already paid taxes on - is a crazy idea. So crazy, nobody does it even though that happens all the time. Except, apparently, inheritance tax. You must really hate taxes on fuel or cigarettes too, and sales tax of course. Similarly, this: > but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them. Is quite the statement. That is what governments do all the time. You want to do a thing, they tell you: No, you cannot do that. If you fail to comply, we will punish you. For some countries, all the way up to and including murdering you. Government dictates and you agree. That whole 'monopoly on violence' thing. In this case, government has some thoughts on how you should spend your money as you are shuffling off your mortal coil. It suggests you spend some of that on general things the country as a whole wants funded. It very strongly suggests it. Insists, really. Kinda like how it insists you wear a seatbelt.

lifeisstillgood 2y ago

>>> The Scott trust was created by journalists for journalists, at a unique point in time where journalists had money to self-finance Where is the trust created by coders for coders at a time uniquely profitable for coders?

mushufasa 2y ago
Honestly things like this can also be an argument FOR crazy high death taxes. Something similar happened in a history podcast I heard about Porche, which is still owned by the original family. At one point, germany told them their tax on ownership gains is 90%. So instead, they decided they would just re-invest into the business R&D to write off the taxes instead. That gave us the invention of Porche's Racing team. source: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/porsche-with-doug-demuro https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/porsche-with-doug-demuro
- laborcontract 2y ago
  You can get unintended consequences from this, like forcing the increase of nepotism. If you look at South Korea, for instance, the Chaebol, despite facing some of the highest inheritance taxes in the world, still have a grip on power. How? You keep the kids in management, you encourage lots of cross holdings between corporations so that even though the kids’ share falls, you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes that is horrible for shareholders and innovation as a society. That said Porsche indeed is an exceptional company in many ways in both the innovative end as well as their holdings structure.
  - robocat 2y ago
    Strong negative incentives create weird workarounds. > you enforce power through social contracts in the upper strata of classes Do you have any links that explain this? I'm planning to visit South Korea so understanding some of the politics is interesting...
    - laborcontract 2y ago
      The following links here are a good place to start. Elliott's activist letter to Samsung: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Press-Release-and-Letter.pdf http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Press-Relea... Elliott's presentation: http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Presentation.pdf http://sevalueproposals.com/assets/downloads/SEC-Presentatio... Elliott famously disapproved of the Samsung C&T merger, which ultimately went through. The Korean media demonized Elliott for trying to reform the company. It was an eye-opening experience seeing how Samsung effectively captured Korea both politically and through the media. McKinsey Report (ctrl-f: "korea discount") https://www.mckinsey.com/kr/~/media/mckinsey/locations/asia/korea/our%20insights/koreas%20next%20s%20curve%20a%20new%20economic%20growth%20model%20for%202040/koreas-next-s-curve-a-new-economic-growth-model-for-2040.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/kr/~/media/mckinsey/locations/asia/... Bloomberg report on the Korea discount: https://archive.md/eBJdl https://archive.md/eBJdl FT Report about cross shareholding: https://archive.md/eYXGM https://archive.md/eYXGM For all claims of Korea's dynamism, it's still seen as investment rat poison and it's telling that it's still considered an "emerging market" by MSCI. Public markets aside, SK's venture capital scene is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.
vermilingua 2y ago
They exist? This is called FOSS and some outfits are even able to offer paid employment.
- ghaff 2y ago
  One can imagine trusts devoted to open source. (They probably exist in some form.) But that probably means that modest amounts of money are distributed to a vanishingly small number of coders based on, likely, the preferences of some executive director. In general, it's fairly clear that jobs for open source developers is generally more effective than charity of various kinds which is subject to change at any time. (OK, jobs are too but that tends to be less related to political, etc. winds.)
- Centigonal 2y ago
  FOSS is not a monetary instrument?
  - koolba 2y ago
    A commit bit may not be liquid, but you can earn from it. There’s tons of companies that would pay for prioritization of their desired FOSS work.
- eru 2y ago
  There's also the Ethereum foundation, if that's your jive.
aorloff 2y ago
Tiny little businesses that you never hear about
robocat 2y ago
We build open-source trust-equivalents (foundations) with valuable intellectual property on the balance sheet instead of crude money. However, is Mozilla a money oriented coder trust? If you've had any experience with small trusts, they often get captured by self-interested people. The Scott Trust seems to stand out from others with its outcomes.

akoboldfrying 2y ago

Fascinating! (I do find some irony in the fact that a majority of Guardian readers these days would abhor attempts by rich businessmen to dodge taxes.)

ghaff 2y ago
Charitable trusts, depending on the type, often/usually provide shielding from various types of taxes. That's not intended to be a cynical statement--the end result may well still be positive for society--but nonetheless it's one mechanism by which at least relatively affluent people can keep profits out of the hands of the government. It happens at much smaller scale than in this case as well.
Angostura 2y ago
As a Guardian reader, the idea of a wealthy person placing their money in a charitable trust - that actually does valuable work, rather than handing it to their children seems entirely reasonable
- hk__2 2y ago
  > ... a wealthy person placing their money in a charitable trust - that actually does valuable work, rather than handing it to their children Isn’t it money that should have gone to the State here, rather than the children? They didn’t do the trust not to give money to their children, but rather to avoid taxes.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    Some portion of Guardian readers might see the state as the main provider of benefits to society, but I very much doubt most would. Guardian is a (in the European sense) liberal paper, with a readership ranging from the centre and toward the left, with a large proportion along that entire range being totally fine with non-state organisations structured for the public benefit. You'll also find plenty who look on the state with suspicion to outright hostility and would actively prefer if more businesses had ownership structured this way, whether or not the handover of wealth that creates them "avoids taxes".

timewizard 2y ago

> While today journalism struggles to make money It rather depends on what you mean by journalism. I suspect your definition is true to the Guardian's apparent aims, publishing well researched truths to an interested population. What was being published in the 1800s was most certainly not that; instead, being very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.

eru 2y ago
> [...] very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today. They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so.
- chgs 2y ago
  Lucrative doesn’t always mean monetary terms.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  They're exceptionally lucrative for the people who can get their viewers to buy their memecoin and send donations to own the outgroup.
  - eru 2y ago
    Memecoins are a very, very small part of the overall economy. Much smaller than journalism used to be in its heyday.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Boris Johnson was paid more by the Telegraph (£220k) to write one column a week than he was as Foreign Secretary at the same time. Propaganda is lucrative.
- FabHK 2y ago
  > They are lucrative, but I don't think exceptionally so. Probably not as lucrative as the despicable academic publisher parasites.

russellbeattie 2y ago

In a post about why it's good thing to have a paper that's not owned by the super wealthy, you insist on using the term "death tax" - a right-wing pejorative - instead of just sticking with inheritance tax. The incongruity of this never crossed your mind?

chgs 2y ago
He seems to think that the independence of the guardian is a bad thing. It’s clear from his post that we need higher inheritance tax, and wealth tax in general, especially on unrealised gains.
- thworp 2y ago
  > especially on unrealised gains. Right, absolutely brilliant idea. You live prudently, save some money every month and invest it (stocks, bonds, whatever). Due to factors entirely outside your control like a stock market bubble or an interest rate drop, the $50k portfolio you built over 30 years is now worth $70k. Your unrealized $20k gain is taxed at 10% for easier math. You don't have $2k cash on hand and are forced to sell some of your portfolio to pay the tax. Next year, there is a crash. You now have just $40k in assets. But there is a gradual recovery, and the year after it's back to $50k. You now owe another $1k. Sound good?
robertlagrant 2y ago
The glaring incongruity is that the Guardian exists because someone used trusts as tax avoidance.

tempfile 2y ago

> I guess it was a tax on unrealized gains! Inheritance taxes invariably are. The recent UK controversy around farm land inheritance was the same.

pjc50 2y ago
That was definitely a case of people buying up land purely for the IHT value and then doing some toy farming on the corner to get the exemption. I feel like a lot of these cases could be avoided if people wanted to structure their family business like a business and gradually transfer control to their children, rather than keep it as personal property right until the very last minute.

InsideOutSanta 2y ago

>found a workaround to avoid the silly death tax I don't know if you're using the word "silly" sarcastically here, but if not, isn't this an example of this type of tax working exactly as intended? John still greatly benefited from his parents' work, and so did society at large to this very day.

arp242 2y ago
"Death tax" alone is already a very loaded way to describe inheritance tax. That said, having to pay inheritance tax twice over an organisation like this in a short span of time is rather unusual, and arguably, a bit "silly".
- Lutger 2y ago
  It is very good example of political framing. It evokes the thought of tax as a punishment for dying, and its collection as a kind of harassment of the bereaved. So tax bad, case closed, no discussion. But of course, it is not death and loss that it taxed, it is rather the accumulated wealth being redistributed over both society at large and the heirs, in some kind of ratio. In favor of inheritance tax: the wealth somebody amassed has also been thanks to its participation in society, so it is only fair some portion of it goes back to society. The heirs played no part in it, so why should they get any, let alone all of it? Furthermore, inheriting wealth goes against the idea of meritocracy, and maintains inequality in an unfair way in modern societies. Why should inheritance tax not be 100%? Children often grow attached to the 'stuff' their parents have collected, be it things or land, houses or money. It seems unfair to take it all away from them, as they feel they already 'own it' merely by being their children. So inheritance tax is some kind of compromise. However, as each generation these days tend to fully 'break' with their parents, in a way (economically, spiritually), inheritance itself seems more and more like a thing of our tribal pasts. I imagine a future where there is no inheritance tax anymore, because the whole concept of inheritance will go away.
  - ajsnigrutin 2y ago
    But wasn't the "society" paid off by all the "living taxes" before the person died? Imagine having nothing, your parents dying, you, an eg. broke college student inheriting a 2 bedroom apartment, which is somehow worth $1mio, and you owe so much tax (that you can't pay) that you're forced to sell the apartment, the only place you've ever known. With 100% inheritance tax, i'd literally stop working as soon as i reached enough money to retire. Why work harder if it all vanishes when I die, and my hypothetical kids gain nothig? Or, more realistically, i'd convert stuff to cash and give it to them without the government knowing. Tax the income, close the loopholes, once the tax for something is paid, the rest should go to the person, the government has got its share, it has enough. And i'm saying this as someone who already lives in a country without inheritance tax (in most usualy cases).

euroderf 2y ago

A death tax is a tax on death. It's not that. It's a birth windfall wealth tax.

zmibes 2y ago
> A death tax is a tax on death. It's not that. It's a birth windfall wealth tax. weasel words if ever there was.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Quite the opposite, thank you very much. "Death tax" sounds like cruelty compounded. And a birth windfall? It's all over the culture. Stupid people with inherited money and inherited power.
Cpoll 2y ago
Sure, and income tax is just a labor windfall wealth tax.
- euroderf 2y ago
  To the extent that it reflects actual work, income is hardly a windfall. OTOH... Elon and Donald had gobs of cash drop in their laps, what's not to like about reasonable taxes on it ? Split it (say) 50-50 with society. Unless you have found an infant with a track record of accomplishment - and an investment strategy to match.

pyrale 2y ago

> This is all to say: the guardian became a nonprofit-like trust at a point in time it was already a stable business, with capital to self-finance. The same kind of logic was applied to two french newspapers: - Le canard enchaîné, created in 1915, specific status preventing sale of capital made in 1958. Motive was foiling an attempted takeover by another company. - Mediapart, created in 2004, trust made in 2019. They made the change deliberately in order to protect the newspaper's future. Both newspapers are doing well today, so I'm not sure this kind of thing is a product of its time and impossible to copy nowadays. However, both newspapers are producing quality investigative journalism, which most news media don't these days.

rzwitserloot 2y ago

"Death Tax"? What the heck are you on about? The dead aren't taxed, they can't, they are dead. What are you going to do to them as punishment if they fail to comply? Shoot the corpse? It's a tax levied on those who get a completely free/undeserved sudden windfall; in the sense that they did not do anything to obtain it and didn't even have to expose risk or pay for a chance. Most nations put pretty serious taxes on earnings from lotteries, and an inheritance is like a lottery where you didn't even have to pay for a ticket. There's no obvious objective truth about the idea of taxing inheritance. But calling it "silly death tax" is, oof. Idiotic. Cut it out.

inanutshellus 2y ago
Ah... Several other comments were complaining about "death tax", but until I read your post I didn't really get what their fuss was about.
card_zero 2y ago
Now my advice for those who die Declare the pennies on your eyes One of the punchier Beatles songs, good riff.
ifyoubuildit 2y ago
The inheritance will often have been arranged before the person dies, no? So they wanted to direct their assets (which were already taxed in myriad ways) but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them.
- rzwitserloot 2y ago
  I pay sales tax when I buy something with money I have. That was already taxed. Huffing and Puffing about paying taxes when you do a thing _just_ because the thing you are doing, you do with money you already paid taxes on - is a crazy idea. So crazy, nobody does it even though that happens all the time. Except, apparently, inheritance tax. You must really hate taxes on fuel or cigarettes too, and sales tax of course. Similarly, this: > but you decide that you have more of a right to direct those assets for them. Is quite the statement. That is what governments do all the time. You want to do a thing, they tell you: No, you cannot do that. If you fail to comply, we will punish you. For some countries, all the way up to and including murdering you. Government dictates and you agree. That whole 'monopoly on violence' thing. In this case, government has some thoughts on how you should spend your money as you are shuffling off your mortal coil. It suggests you spend some of that on general things the country as a whole wants funded. It very strongly suggests it. Insists, really. Kinda like how it insists you wear a seatbelt.