Inheritance Tax

Happened upon a show on PBS called "Religion and Ethics Newsweek" and tuned in for a couple of minutes as one of the subjects was inheritance taxes. I was curious as they had a snippet of Prof. Michael Sandel from Harvard in regards to this subject. In doing some brief additional searching on the interwebs, essentially he is advocating extremely high inheritance taxes as he finds it unfair that people get a leg up because they are born into wealth. While I will admit, I did not watch the 55 minute video that I found online regarding the subject, I have to admit that I was a bit floored by this course of thinking. Not meaning to turn this into a conservative vs liberal finger pointing fest, but what are some general thoughts behind this? What is the rationale in thinking that the government should be allowed to step in and take the vast majority of someones estate when they die? Where does this type of thinking originate? I kept looking for a glimmer of a smirk when the guy was talking expecting him to start laughing and say "Bazinga!', but this dude is 100% serious. Really?

Edited by oldpbnoob - 31 January 2011 at 12:09pm

I don't like it at all.

Mainly because the money will end up being wasted. I bust my ass all my life to make some money that I can pass on for my kids to enjoy, invest, and grow- and now the government tells me that I can't do that? Eh.....No thanks.

it really grinds my gears when people think that if someone has money they can "afford" to pay higher taxes.

i think if someone earned their money (or their family earned it) they should be able to keep it.

i think if there is going to be an income tax there should be a flat rate. X% regardless of if you make $10,000 or $10,000,000.

one of the big problems in modern countries (us and a good part of europe) is being rewarded for sitting on your butt and being punished for getting out and making a living for yourself.

i have a good friend of the family who is paying over 150K in income tax between himself and his wife, he has had to travel a great deal for work over the past 20 years or so and he is only home on the weekends. (this puts a great strain on his family and health but he does it to provide for them) they are putting 3 kids through college (no aid) and they also have a mortgage and car payments...

meanwhile i have another friend who works at a homeless shelter and sees people driving BMWs and eating steak or lobster every night and they dont do crap...

but hey... its only fair right?

agentwhale007 wrote: I support an inheritance tax, although I don't think it should be a crippling level or anything extreme. If you're going to mark the received money as just that, you should owe taxes on it, just as if the person was alive.

There is that. Which I don't have a problem with of course. (aside from the fundamental gripe with taxation in the first place) But giant portions of inheritance doesn't need to be handed over to the govt. just because someone died.

Reb Cpl wrote: But giant portions of inheritance doesn't need to be handed over to the govt. just because someone died.

Concurred.

merc wrote: i think if someone earned their money (or their family earned it) they should be able to keep it.

I've never understood this statement. Because if someone should be able to keep it - all of it - and that is their right, then why not support the banishment of taxes all-together?

It's silly to say that everyone deserves to keep everything they earn and then support a taxation system of any kind.

i think if there is going to be an income tax there should be a flat rate. X% regardless of if you make $10,000 or $10,000,000.

It's a lovely thought on paper, but it simply does not work out. Flat tax simulations don't yield very good results for a number of reasons, namely a shifting of burden to the poor, which leads to a pretty chaotic string of events.

one of the big problems in modern countries (us and a good part of europe) is being rewarded for sitting on your butt and being punished for getting out and making a living for yourself.

And if taxation is to blame for this imaginary problem of entitlements, how do you explain Scandinavia's success in pretty much every living standard measurement? 

i have a good friend of the family who is paying over 150K in income tax between himself and his wife, he has had to travel a great deal for work over the past 20 years or so and he is only home on the weekends. (this puts a great strain on his family and health but he does it to provide for them) they are putting 3 kids through college (no aid) and they also have a mortgage and car payments...

One, it sounds like this person needs to look into a better tax preparation service. Are they deducting travel expenses for work?

Two, how much is the family bringing in?

Three, why are his kids getting no aid? There are hundreds and hundreds of available private scholarships.

meanwhile i have another friend who works at a homeless shelter and sees people driving BMWs and eating steak or lobster every night and they dont do crap...

While I don't believe this hyperbolized anecdote in the least, it brings up a decent point:

Yes, people will take advantage of assistance programs and charity. But what do we do about it?

Is it better to scratch the programs completely and shut down the soup kitchen than it is to make sure the people needing assistance get it?




Edited by agentwhale007 - 31 January 2011 at 1:33pm

oldpbnoob wrote: As mentioned, I did not watch the video that was associated with this idea as it was an hour long, but from the snippet I saw, it seemed to indicate they they were talking about a very high rate.

It's not surprising. There are kooks on both sides.

I don't see what good an extreme tax on inheritance would do. It's a relatively small pool of money to be any good, when you think about it, compared to general income tax from the larger society.

If this guy played paintball, he would be the dude that gets on the Tippmann forum after a day at the field and cries about the little kids with nicer guns because "they didn't even pay for it, Mommy and Daddy did! QQ"

^^^ Ironically, he is a professor at Harvard.... So lets preach not being born lucky to those that were in fact born lucky?

I think he was talking about the students.

Here we have a probate tax. At a certain amount it kicks in. And certain amounts the percentage amounts go up.