The Moral Case for Abolishing the Inheritance Tax

[corbe]

The Moral Case for Abolishing the Inheritance Tax

How it violates freedom of conscience and destroys productivity.

Sat Jul 10, 2021 Jason D. Hill

There is a common belief among left-wing "progressives" that failure to enforce the inheritance tax will result in increased income disparities among racial, ethnic and social groups. The tax is a way of allocating the already-taxed income of wealth creators among the general population in a manner, it is imagined, that will ease society toward the moral position any fair and just society ought to occupy: one that has achieved total equity among groups, and one that establishes metaphysical egalitarianism as an appropriate characteristic of the human condition.

But let us start from the beginning. When one is the offspring of a deceased wealth creator who is being taxed on her inheritance, exactly what is she being taxed on? Let us call this person Catherine. Catherine’s father, Mario, migrated from Poland to the United States in 1946 and started a small business in construction without government help. He started out as a construction laborer, saved his money and, after fifteen back-breaking, torturous years, began a roofing company based on a loan acquired from a loan shark. On account of his broken English and lack of a formal education he was unable to acquire a loan from a reputable financial institution. In five years, Mario owned four such companies. By the time Catherine was born her father was the sole owner of a dozen roofing companies in the state of Illinois. He had also expanded his businesses to include plumbing and house painting, and even started a moving franchise. Mario was a millionaire by the time Catherine was five—allowing her American-born mother to homeschool her and her two younger brothers.

Catherine’s father had learned how to invest his money wisely by studying the stock market, and he even become a day trader as a hobby during his retirement years after moving to California. When he died peacefully in his sleep from heart failure at the age of ninety, just two months after his wife’s death, Catherine and her brothers, now in their mid-fifties, inherited a fortune in excess of US$20M. 

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https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/moral-case-abolishing-inheritance-tax-jason-d-hill/

[Smokin Joe]

The problem is that those who don't have, assume being the boss of your own business means sitting by the pool with your beverage of choice all day (as seen on TeeVee!).
Those people have never built a business, have never taken the risks, put in the 15 hour days, spent their every waking moment making it work, keeping it going working with customers, the taxman, vendors, the taxman, accountants, the taxman, employees, the taxman, and every other time consuming and stressful duty needed to make the business viable and make it grow.

There are plenty of sacrifices made to get it going, keep it going, and the biggest one is time.
Time spent not doing things with family, missed occasions, "rat stomping" events that pull you away from family at the worst possible times to fix a problem.

That directly affects the heirs, usually offspring or spouses, whether or not the people who think it takes a village to raise a child think so. Everyone gives up something because running and growing a business isn't some leisurely act, and not even just a 9 to 5 job.

So it is easy for those who do not understand all this to believe that some magic 'wealth fairy' just anointed their heads and made them rich because they like the way they look, but that just isn't how it works.

Even their heirs, progeny of those encumbered by yet more government confiscation by a government that rewards the success of its citizens by removing a higher proportion of the fruits of their labors, will have to apply themselves, educate themselves, and become proficient in the business--or in just managing wealth--in order to maintain or grow it. The alternative is that the business will be fail or sold to its competitors for a fraction (often) of its worth and the money likely squandered.

So, generating and inheriting wealth comes with sacrifice.
The taxes have already been paid on that income, and in their own way, the heirs made sacrifices for it to have been made.
The Government already got its cut.

[jmyrlefuller]

This is downright offensive.

The argument that the income is "already taxed" and can never be taxed again is absurd. A business owner's income is already taxed when customers buy his or her goods. The owner must still pay taxes on it, and both (s)he and his employees must pay taxes on it when (s)he pays them their wages.

Of all the financial transactions in our society, inheritance is by far the least deserving of being exempt from this. The deceased is dead and has no use for the money, and the next of kin did nothing to earn it. Hill's essay conveniently ignores both points and argues that dead people not only can take it with them, but have a moral right! We know the former is not true and thus neither is the latter.

We as a society should, at the very least, tax inheritance as we do any other form of income. We have to dig our way out of the tens of trillions of dollars in debt we've dug ourselves into somehow.

[Smokin Joe]

I don't know of a family business where family didn't contribute. Even those who were denied the presence and attention of parents building a business gave something up.

Maybe we should just leave our stuff to one of the countries who hate us (never mind the kids) and skip the Government middleman.

We're tens of trillions of dollars in debt because we keep borrowing money to give to people who hate America, and to do things at home and abroad that are not authorized by the Constitution.

[Fishrrman]

Abolish the inheritance tax?

With the communists now in control, look for them to increase it to 100%...