Vote totals:
Yes:
25%
No:
75%
Neutral:
0%
DEBATE: INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
Meritocracy is good
Hopefully most people would agree that a society where you have to work hard to earn money is better than one where you can inherit it from mummy and daddy. The first reason for this is a simple question of rights to wealth, how can someone hold the right to wealth that they did not create. Many people criticise the idea that members of the royal family gain social status and wealth without any personal merit, surely this is the same thing?
Secondly this creates an incentive to earn. Relying on inherited income from parents is impossible, which incentivises even the richest in society to work hard and be a productive member of society.
Many parents earn money just for their children. continuing a happy, healthy family is nature. Once the money is made by whichever member/s of the family if becomes the money of the family as a whole.
Let’s says for example a wife and a husband have a family. The husband, in this case, makes 100% of the money while the wife looks after home affairs. Does the fact the the wife has not earned the money mean she does not have a right to have and use it?
This can be applied to parents and children. The family earns money as a whole. If certain parents think that this is not how their family works or should work then they can write their children out of their wills.
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
It’s better than income tax
Ultimately income tax can only achieve a certain level of equality. If you tax people too much you disincentivise working hard and the economy collapses. Taxing people after they are dead is somewhat less of a disincentive to them working hard whilst they are living.
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
More tax money would be nice
OK, some people don’t like big government, but everyone likes not getting MRSA when they visit an NHS hospital.
Likewise better schooling, transport, cuts in existing taxes even more nukes to fend off the commies if that’s what floats your boat.
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Please note that the title of this debate is ‘inheritance tax’ not income tax. I agree that 100% income tax would be insane, since there would be no incentive for anyone to earn money. Money earned from a 100% inheritance tax would always be less year on year than that earned from current taxes, that means a 100% inheritance tax does not require raising the overall level of tax.
Yes if we lived in a perfect world that’s how things would work. Probably without the nukes. But we don’t and every single government that has ever existed proves this point. 100% income tax, 100% government corruption.
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
Hard to get round
Admittedly there are lots of other ways to pass on inequality to children, pay for them to go to Eton, drip feed them cash while you’re still alive or simply set them up with contacts in your chosen field. But the most effective remains to leave them a lump sum of cash when you die, this simply prevents that. Furthermore we already have plenty of clever ways to stop people evading the current 40% tax, we simply need to extend them.
You also can’t emmigrate to avoid the tax, everyone born in the UK gets hit. That’s perfectly possible, US emmigrants still have to pay income tax to the US government, this would work in the same way. Admittedly leaving the country before you have children prevents them getting hit, but does anyone honestly have the foresight to emmigrate in order to decrease their deceased future children’s tax liabilities. I thought not.
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
Better to Collect from the Dead than from the Living
Government needs income. Question becomes where to get the money. Better to get it from dead people than from the living.
Since you have to collect tax anyway, it makes sense to collect first from the dead, then from the rich, then from the poor. That’s the most progressive.
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
Not everyone who passes on cash in their will is a millionaire
Current income tax allows you to pass on a certain amount tax free. There’s no reason that needs to change.
On the other hand I don’t see why people who are are fortunate enough to have parents who 1) owned their own home and 2) died, are any more deserving than those whose parents live in rented accomodation and are still perfectly healthy.
For many individuals the cash they get from , say, their parents’ house is very useful. This tax would penalise those who pass on quite small amounts even more than those who are rich (and could probably get round the law).
INHERITANCE TAX SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100% FOR EVERYONE BORN IN THE UK
People have a right to pass on the money they earned through hard work
If that were true we’d have no justification for tax of any kind. The fact is that the state already pilfers people’s hard earned pennies for its nefarious ends including via the current inheritance tax system. How is a 100% tax any less morally justified than a 40% tax?
Your argument seems to protect hard-earned money but not easy-earned money. In the case of inheritance, hard-earned money transforms into easy-earned money, which your argument does not claim to protect. So, nabbing the dough at the transition point or just slightly after (but before it reaches the pocket of the child) is allowable by your own argument.
Further, this argument requires judgment about how hard someone worked to gain money that he legally owns.
If people have earned money through working hard they have a right to spend it in whatever way they choose. Surely that includes passing it on to their children.
