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This is just wrong. If we skip the ultra rich totally and focus on normal families inheritance is THE way to help you decendants. Right now (where i live) you

This is just wrong. If we skip the ultra rich totally and focus on normal families inheritance is THE way to help you decendants. Right now (where i live) you pay a big tax on inheritance, this is ok if you only inherit cash. In 99% of inheritances this is not the case. You inherit family home, a cottage etc. Then you must sell because you cant afford to pay for it. Now the asset is gone forever and the next generation will most likely inherit nothing. Its really hard to keep anything of value in the family because of this, that one house that was purchased for 60K is now somehow worth 600K (even it has all kinds of problems) and you need to take a loan just to keep it. By taxing inheritance its sure that decendants that work basic jobs will forever be poor.

mdrzn 1y ago
Let's just make the first million (€/$) "tax free", everything else increase progressively up to 100% when you go over X millions or any other arbitrary value we decide.
__s 1y ago
May want to say where you live, in US estate tax is exempt under 13M
- blitzar 1y ago
  Not sure about parent comment but UK - everything over £325,000 (USD ~450,000) is taxed at 40%.
- phplovesong 1y ago
  Europe. Here we tax everything, usually twice.
ro_sharp 1y ago
You can sell the asset, so how does anyone inherit nothing? Someone who wants to spend an inheritance is going to do it, whether it’s liquid (cash) or marginally less so (real property)
- xienze 1y ago
  Maybe a home that’s been in the family for a long time has more than just monetary value to the people inheriting it.
- phplovesong 1y ago
  you sell and after that its gone. If there is a house you can a) live in it (by doing so you cut your own families costs by a massive amount) or b) rent it and get a little extra each month. Once you sell it you pay more taxes. Do you think any of the money you got will go to your kids, or even grandkids? Id say in 80% of all cases it will be long gone before that time comes.
veqz 1y ago
Inheritance tax is usually only on values above a certain point, though. That point can easily be set reasonable high – say, 5% tax on all inheritance above €2M, and 40% on all inheritance above €10M, and normal families would hardly be affected.
- faustlast 1y ago
  In theory, it is nice; however, valuing assets is not easy, especially for the whole population. This arbitrariness clashes with the principle of equal rights in most constitutions. On the other hand, taxing income is very easy since the number has a precise origin.
317070 1y ago
A common proposal I'm fond of, is that you get a budget (of say 1 million) you are allowed to inherit tax free across the span of your life. This incentivises the rich to split up their fortune, and allows the poor to keep control of objects with emotional luggage. That said, if the value of your house has grown tenfold, it is most likely because the community added that value. And so I don't think it is necessarily wrong if that same community sees some of that value back.
matlock 1y ago
In every jurisdiction I know of if you inherit and live in it as your main residence you don’t need to pay. If you just inherit to rent it out and make money why shouldn’t you pay something for that like it were cash.
- blitzar 1y ago
  UK. You have to pay your 40% within 6 months of death, even a main residence.
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    If your house is worth more than 500k and you're inheriting from your parents, otherwise 325k. That's a pretty absurd amount of money to be getting tax free. Like, assuming 50% marginal you'd need to earn 1mn to get that post tax.
    - blitzar 1y ago
      The home you have lived in and shared with your parents for, 27 years (the current and increasing average "moving out of home" age), could be considered as much yours as theirs. You are not "earning" something you are continuing to "own" something that was already yours, shared with people who were here and are no longer here.
      - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        > The home you have lived in and shared with your parents for, 27 years (the current and increasing average "moving out of home" age), could be considered as much yours as theirs. I only spent about twenty two years in my parent's house (well less, because we moved), but you're making an emotive argument while I was arguing more from a data-driven point of view. The Irish inheritance tax is more generous to children (325k euro per child is tax free), but even in the UK, my three siblings and I would have paid zero tax. And our inheritance is quite large, lots of people in the UK & Ireland inherit much less. Like, the ONS data[0] (which covers 2014-16) suggests that most inheritences go to the top quintile in terms of income (which anecdotally matches my experience) so this is a tiny, tiny problem in societal terms. I get that inheritance tax is very emotive (particularly around family homes), but given that the vast majority of wealth is in property (except for that of the 0.1%), then I think inheritance tax is a pretty good one, and am happy that it's something that my kids will have to worry about, assuming we're lucky enough to leave them anything. For context, I regard inherited wealth as mostly unfair, as the children of successful people have often had lots of advantages afforded to them already, so I'm not sure why those advantages should compound over generations. [0]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/articles/intergenerationaltransfersthedistributionofinheritancesgiftsandloans/2018-10-30 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... Note: the ONS statistics are weird, talking about inheritances and gifts interchangeably and the numbers seem far too low. Figure 7 shows the unfairness clearly, IMO.
arealaccount 1y ago
The majority of people don’t inherit anything, so you are still luckier than most!
- happytoexplain 1y ago
  Crabs in a pot.
- phplovesong 1y ago
  That was kind of my point. Most people dont inherit anything because its all gone. Taxes will eat it up eventually.
andrepd 1y ago
What is a progressive tax? Ridiculous straw man, because this is like saying income tax should be abolished because minimum wage people can't afford it. Yeah no shit that's why it's progressive. In the case of inheritance, even a 0% bracket until ~1M$ will mean the tax leaves the middle class entirely unaffected while ensuring massive feudal-levels of generational wealth are at least curbed, and turned over to the commons.
- phplovesong 1y ago
  It does not matter. If a person with 40K/year salary inherits a 800K house there is no way he can pay for the taxes. No bank will even give him a loan. The house is basically going to the highest bidder. This means you will most likely get a poor price on the house, and even worse when times are bad (like now) when no ones buying. This means your 800K asset maybe gives you 650K, and from that sum you still pay the inheritance tax + sales tax (thats usually in the 20% range). You will likely get somewhere in the 450-500K for an asset that was worth 800K. This is how to poor will remain poor.
  - JAlexoid 1y ago
    UK is a country where a person with 70k of annual income can buy a home for 1mil. The whole property market in UK is a pyramid scheme, time to realize that. The whole system is FUBARed.
contrarian1234 1y ago
its such a feudal mentality that I really have trouble identifying with it. My parents are significantly wealthier than me, but i just have zero sense of being entitled to the fruits of their labor (though of course i have benefited from it) and even moreso their house... (i wish they had a cottage lol) we all make our own way in the modern world and i feel as a society we try to not just leave it to fate and how gilded the vagina you crawled out of was
- phplovesong 1y ago
  Ofc. But as a parent i WANT to give something to my children after i pass. Why should every generation "suffer" like the previous did? What you do with your life is up to you, but having a guardrail can make life just that more pleasant. Life should not be about counting cents and going from pay-check to pay-check.
boxed 1y ago
You are confusing "if only I get a high inheritance tax" with "if everyone gets a very high inheritance tax". The inheritance tax has to go somewhere. It could go into science and infrastructure and then everyone gets richer. Or it could be paid out as a dividend, then everyone below the average gets richer. There are many options here. Just saying "inheritance tax bad" without talking about the output side of such a tax is by definition going to be... well.. weird.
- phplovesong 1y ago
  Boy can i tell you, it does not go to "science". It goes 99% to paying for social security.
  - boxed 1y ago
    Sure. But that's my point. It's the output of the tax system that matters almost entirely. The input being high or low is only relevant if the output is good. If the output is shit, yea, then we should lower the taxes. So we shouldn't really argue for raising or lower taxes, we should argue for spending it better.
    - phplovesong 1y ago
      How? When social security is like 75-80% of all spending you really cant do much other than cut welfare, that brings its own problems.
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    Generally about 30% welfare, 30% education and 30% health.
blarg1 1y ago
I wonder what would happen if your parents didn't leave the house to anyone, and you don't claim it but squat it.
- phplovesong 1y ago
  Afaik you can "abandon it", or when you decline an inheritance its automatically going to the gov, hence you would be illegal trespassing after this point.

mdrzn 1y ago

Let's just make the first million (€/$) "tax free", everything else increase progressively up to 100% when you go over X millions or any other arbitrary value we decide.

__s 1y ago

May want to say where you live, in US estate tax is exempt under 13M

blitzar 1y ago
Not sure about parent comment but UK - everything over £325,000 (USD ~450,000) is taxed at 40%.
phplovesong 1y ago
Europe. Here we tax everything, usually twice.

ro_sharp 1y ago

You can sell the asset, so how does anyone inherit nothing? Someone who wants to spend an inheritance is going to do it, whether it’s liquid (cash) or marginally less so (real property)

xienze 1y ago
Maybe a home that’s been in the family for a long time has more than just monetary value to the people inheriting it.
phplovesong 1y ago
you sell and after that its gone. If there is a house you can a) live in it (by doing so you cut your own families costs by a massive amount) or b) rent it and get a little extra each month. Once you sell it you pay more taxes. Do you think any of the money you got will go to your kids, or even grandkids? Id say in 80% of all cases it will be long gone before that time comes.

veqz 1y ago

Inheritance tax is usually only on values above a certain point, though. That point can easily be set reasonable high – say, 5% tax on all inheritance above €2M, and 40% on all inheritance above €10M, and normal families would hardly be affected.

faustlast 1y ago
In theory, it is nice; however, valuing assets is not easy, especially for the whole population. This arbitrariness clashes with the principle of equal rights in most constitutions. On the other hand, taxing income is very easy since the number has a precise origin.

317070 1y ago

A common proposal I'm fond of, is that you get a budget (of say 1 million) you are allowed to inherit tax free across the span of your life. This incentivises the rich to split up their fortune, and allows the poor to keep control of objects with emotional luggage. That said, if the value of your house has grown tenfold, it is most likely because the community added that value. And so I don't think it is necessarily wrong if that same community sees some of that value back.

matlock 1y ago

In every jurisdiction I know of if you inherit and live in it as your main residence you don’t need to pay. If you just inherit to rent it out and make money why shouldn’t you pay something for that like it were cash.

blitzar 1y ago
UK. You have to pay your 40% within 6 months of death, even a main residence.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  If your house is worth more than 500k and you're inheriting from your parents, otherwise 325k. That's a pretty absurd amount of money to be getting tax free. Like, assuming 50% marginal you'd need to earn 1mn to get that post tax.
  - blitzar 1y ago
    The home you have lived in and shared with your parents for, 27 years (the current and increasing average "moving out of home" age), could be considered as much yours as theirs. You are not "earning" something you are continuing to "own" something that was already yours, shared with people who were here and are no longer here.
    - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      > The home you have lived in and shared with your parents for, 27 years (the current and increasing average "moving out of home" age), could be considered as much yours as theirs. I only spent about twenty two years in my parent's house (well less, because we moved), but you're making an emotive argument while I was arguing more from a data-driven point of view. The Irish inheritance tax is more generous to children (325k euro per child is tax free), but even in the UK, my three siblings and I would have paid zero tax. And our inheritance is quite large, lots of people in the UK & Ireland inherit much less. Like, the ONS data[0] (which covers 2014-16) suggests that most inheritences go to the top quintile in terms of income (which anecdotally matches my experience) so this is a tiny, tiny problem in societal terms. I get that inheritance tax is very emotive (particularly around family homes), but given that the vast majority of wealth is in property (except for that of the 0.1%), then I think inheritance tax is a pretty good one, and am happy that it's something that my kids will have to worry about, assuming we're lucky enough to leave them anything. For context, I regard inherited wealth as mostly unfair, as the children of successful people have often had lots of advantages afforded to them already, so I'm not sure why those advantages should compound over generations. [0]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/articles/intergenerationaltransfersthedistributionofinheritancesgiftsandloans/2018-10-30 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... Note: the ONS statistics are weird, talking about inheritances and gifts interchangeably and the numbers seem far too low. Figure 7 shows the unfairness clearly, IMO.

arealaccount 1y ago

The majority of people don’t inherit anything, so you are still luckier than most!

happytoexplain 1y ago
Crabs in a pot.
phplovesong 1y ago
That was kind of my point. Most people dont inherit anything because its all gone. Taxes will eat it up eventually.

andrepd 1y ago

What is a progressive tax? Ridiculous straw man, because this is like saying income tax should be abolished because minimum wage people can't afford it. Yeah no shit that's why it's progressive. In the case of inheritance, even a 0% bracket until ~1M$ will mean the tax leaves the middle class entirely unaffected while ensuring massive feudal-levels of generational wealth are at least curbed, and turned over to the commons.

phplovesong 1y ago
It does not matter. If a person with 40K/year salary inherits a 800K house there is no way he can pay for the taxes. No bank will even give him a loan. The house is basically going to the highest bidder. This means you will most likely get a poor price on the house, and even worse when times are bad (like now) when no ones buying. This means your 800K asset maybe gives you 650K, and from that sum you still pay the inheritance tax + sales tax (thats usually in the 20% range). You will likely get somewhere in the 450-500K for an asset that was worth 800K. This is how to poor will remain poor.
- JAlexoid 1y ago
  UK is a country where a person with 70k of annual income can buy a home for 1mil. The whole property market in UK is a pyramid scheme, time to realize that. The whole system is FUBARed.

contrarian1234 1y ago

its such a feudal mentality that I really have trouble identifying with it. My parents are significantly wealthier than me, but i just have zero sense of being entitled to the fruits of their labor (though of course i have benefited from it) and even moreso their house... (i wish they had a cottage lol) we all make our own way in the modern world and i feel as a society we try to not just leave it to fate and how gilded the vagina you crawled out of was

phplovesong 1y ago
Ofc. But as a parent i WANT to give something to my children after i pass. Why should every generation "suffer" like the previous did? What you do with your life is up to you, but having a guardrail can make life just that more pleasant. Life should not be about counting cents and going from pay-check to pay-check.

boxed 1y ago

You are confusing "if only I get a high inheritance tax" with "if everyone gets a very high inheritance tax". The inheritance tax has to go somewhere. It could go into science and infrastructure and then everyone gets richer. Or it could be paid out as a dividend, then everyone below the average gets richer. There are many options here. Just saying "inheritance tax bad" without talking about the output side of such a tax is by definition going to be... well.. weird.

phplovesong 1y ago
Boy can i tell you, it does not go to "science". It goes 99% to paying for social security.
- boxed 1y ago
  Sure. But that's my point. It's the output of the tax system that matters almost entirely. The input being high or low is only relevant if the output is good. If the output is shit, yea, then we should lower the taxes. So we shouldn't really argue for raising or lower taxes, we should argue for spending it better.
  - phplovesong 1y ago
    How? When social security is like 75-80% of all spending you really cant do much other than cut welfare, that brings its own problems.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  Generally about 30% welfare, 30% education and 30% health.

blarg1 1y ago

I wonder what would happen if your parents didn't leave the house to anyone, and you don't claim it but squat it.

phplovesong 1y ago
Afaik you can "abandon it", or when you decline an inheritance its automatically going to the gov, hence you would be illegal trespassing after this point.