Bartlett's Bizarre Bazaar

I certainly can't nitpick this one. I agree entirely:

http://fairvotewatch.blogspot.com/2005/11/back-to-clients-for-davis.html

http://fairvotewatch.blogspot.com/2005/09/inherited-lunacy.html

I think most of the objectors to IHT employ a mix of your arguments, all based loosely around the notion of property rights. As you put it, it is my money, I ought to be able to do with it as I wish. But that's a fundamental error: it's the transfer of that money within the rfelatively secure institutional context of the UK that is being taxed. Should the person dying not wish to transfer his wealth and merely let it become unowned on his death, he might find there's a lower tax bill...

Arguments against IHT also seem to get mixed up with anti-tax arguments. This is another category error: pro-IHT arguments are about the mix of taxation, and whether one wants to tax luck or industry as a first port of call. Personally, I'd have some boffins work out where the Laffer curve peaks for IHT and set it there.
 

Oh, allow me!

How much are you paying your son? Are you paying him to mow the lawn? Then he probably doesn't make enough to get taxed anyway. If you were a solicitor and hired your son, your business would pay him, meaning he would be paid by business income before corporate taxes. Hence, he would only be taxed once in either situation.

Taxes on investments are also double-taxed. If you earn money (of which taxes are paid on it), invest it in stocks and sell those stocks, you pay taxes on your profit.

Your last arguement is only to force the redistribution of wealth amongst society, a Marxist philosphy. You also assume that the children of A & B would be identical as well. Many children of wealthy are lazy, useless, and waste the money of their parents.

Despite the enormous wealth of some American families at the turn of the 20th century, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, etc, their family wealth is now insignificant in comparison to the upstart businessmen like Gates or Branson. So the idea that inhereted wealth is this giant snowball rolling down a hill gaining mass is a fallacy.

In case your are wondering, I more of a Randian philosphy, supporting only a flat income tax. Government spending should be fixed to GDP at about 10-15%. Is there any reason why spending as a precentage of GDP should be more today than it was 30 years ago? The GDP of Great Britain is $1.87 trillion but the government spends $951 billion (50%). The US has a 12.4 trillion GDP, but "only" spent $2.47 trillion (20%). France hits 62%.
 

Your suggestion that many children of the wealthy are lazy etc. does nothing to my argument. If they are as equally lazy as the children of the poor, they are nevertheless much wealthier, an equality that cannot be levelled without tremendous superiority of character (to use meritocratic ideology) on the part of the children of the poor. Yet, if you argue, in any way, that inequalities in wealth are deserved on some moral ground, then inheritance of wealth ought offend you.
 

It all boils down to your view of what government should be involved in. Should the government's business be to make everyone equal or only ensure equal opportunity?
 

The question is: At what point does the government stop taxing people?

Think of all the stuff you pay taxes on:

Income - Income taxes
Investments - Capital Gains taxes
Spending - Sales Taxes (17.5% [!]VAT in Europe)
Property - Real and personal property taxes
Inheritence Taxes, Gift Taxes, all the sundry bullshit taxes you pay on internet, cell phone, regular phones, Hotel Taxes, Airport Taxes.

Where does it stop?
 

JJ/TC: were you trying to prove me right, or is it just coicndental? Arguments about IHT are nothing to do with arguments for or against taxation. One might be in favour of lower taxation (and therefore "smaller" government) overall but high rates of IHT (e.g. me). It's about what the most just mix of taxation is, so a general Angry of Albuquerque rant against tax is irrelevant. Why is this so tricky to understand?

TC:

Should the government's business be to make everyone equal or only ensure equal opportunity?

Sorry, which one of these do you think IHT is irrelevant for?
 

Jarndyce,

The more places there is a tax, the more opportunity for government to take. When you have solely one tax, people know what they are being taxed and can debate it. When you reached the multitude of areas of tax that JJ described, the government can tax here and there, to the point where total taxes are much more than if you had one tax on income.

Should the government's business be to make everyone equal or only ensure equal opportunity?
Sorry, which one of these do you think IHT is irrelevant for?

Barlett wrote: Inheritance tax is not simply a means to raise funds for state spending, but a means to prevent the incremental concentration of wealth through generations... In his view that IHT can be used to 'make everyone equal.'
 

Barlett wrote: Inheritance tax is not simply a means to raise funds for state spending, but a means to prevent the incremental concentration of wealth through generations... In his view that IHT can be used to 'make everyone equal.'

That's an extraordinarily bloody minded interpretation. Suppose, hypothetically, I believed that the business of government was "only to ensure equal opportunity", how better could I do it than to constrain inequalities of unearned wealth that individuals could expect to inherit before they even began to be economic actors?

Chris
 

When I say equality of opportunity, I am referring to mass discrimination and monopolies. Taxing everyone to make sure they are poor when they are born is stupid.

Now the final point against the IHT is housing. Houses in the UK are expensive. Suppose your parents bought a house 40 years ago and recently died, leaving the house to you. Well, that house is now appraised at ₤500,000. Since you have to pay 40% on your inheritance, you would have to come up with ₤200,000 which is going to be impossible even on a reasonable ₤30,000 year salary.

So you are forced to sell the house, possibly leaving you with nowhere to live.

What if it is a family "heirloom" type house. Your great-grandfather bought the land and built the house himself back in 1888. Due to population growth its now expensive. So you are again forced to sell the house?

What if you lived in Aberdeen, you and your father are fishermen? The oil booms drives up the otherwise cheap cost of real estate, and when your father dies, you can't afford to keep the house your family lived in for a century, because you can't pay the tax enormous tax bill.

You all think that the rich are getting away with something, but in fact it's the middle class that will get screwed the most.
 

Both red herrings, TC. IHT only applies to the excess over c. 285k, so in your example your inheritance would allow you to access a half-million pound house for about an 80k mortgage. That's payable on that salary, and to be honest I'm finding it hard to lose sleep worrying about people sitting on that sort of property portfolio.

Second, if you have a "family heirloom" type house, you can leave it in trust for your children. Sure, that means your inheritors can never sell it, but if it's an heirloom, well, they wouldn't want to, would they?

You still haven't come up with even one decent argument for taxing someone's industry and effort rather than their brute luck, which is the kind of argument you have to construct to make IHT seem like a bad idea.
 

TC says: "Taxing everyone to make sure they are poor when they are born is stupid."

I think the argument comes down to what the purpose of taxation is; and this goes for any tax. I believe (and I'm fairly certain TC would agree with me) is that taxes are there to establish a specific governmental aim.

But it seems liek Jarndyce and Andrew believe that taxes are more than just a tool to raise money, but a tool to shape the socio-economic picture. To put it simpler, it seems like your argument is: "These rich guys don't deserve so much money, so we're going to take it."

But what gives the government a right to tax someone at 50%? or 60%? Why does a rich person deserve to keep his property or income less than a poor one? Simply because he has more?
 

As there are an endless number of links in this chain of income and taxation everyone is the victim of INFINITY taxation.

Not true. The number of links in the chain so far is finite - e.g the age of the earth is finite. You could argue that as time goes on, the chain could arbitarily long (but not infinitely). However the 2nd law of thermodynamics assures us that the human race will only be around for a finite amount of time, so in fact there will be a finite bound on the possible maximum length of any tax-chain.
 

John, Can you not read? Jarndyce and Bartlett are clearly arguing that, *even if* you view IHT as just another form of tax, then there is still no good argument against it, unless, as Jarndyce says:

You still haven't come up with even one decent argument for taxing someone's industry and effort rather than their brute luck, which is the kind of argument you have to construct to make IHT seem like a bad idea.

Further, can we PLEASE get away from this stupid idea that we all live in some sort of vacuum, and our property and income are somehow God given. We only have property, and can only get income which has woeth, because we live in a society where everyone, the vast majority of the time, plays by a set of rules which are mutually agreed. As such, I have absolutely no problem giving something back to that society. Furthermore, that society can choose how to distribute wealth and how to tax: yes, we can have an argument. But an argument starting from the mistaken idea that somehow income is God-Given is no argument at all. I'd like to see people get paid in an anarchy...
 

Jarndyce,

I'm finding it hard to lose sleep worrying about people sitting on that sort of property portfolio.

If a guy inherets a ₤500,000 house, which is not "rich" for a London suburb. He has to commute to his job in London and lived with his parents because he can't afford a place on his own. So he is forced to get a mortgage he barely can afford to pay taxes? If he has to pay ₤5500 in income tax, about ₤5000K in council tax? (Pure guess, I paid ₤1400 for an apartment). With having to get a mortgage, he'd have to pay ₤10K/year (15 year mortgage, he's no spring chicken). Leaving him with ₤10K for the year. He essentially pays ₤20K a year in taxes. That is ludicrious.

You all have the opinion of "screw the rich," but its not the rich that get hurt. The REAL rich have the means to move their money offshore, etc. Do you think Richard Branson will be paying 40% of his wealth to the UK government when he dies? Do you think Lord Mountbatten paid 40% of his wealth to the UK when he died? NO!

The people will get screwed the most are the middle class.
 

The Christopher: so, you'd rather tax everyone a bit more, to make up the difference from scrapping IHT? (Remember, calling for less tax overall IS NOT an argument against IHT). So, the person who inherits a nice house in London is now fine, but the person who doesn't have wealthy relatives is extra screwed, as they cannot possibly afford their own house in London, as they are now paying extra in tax. How can this possibly be fairer than the current system?
 

Well the person can't afford to live in/near London, he won't be already working in London. (He might be working for a paper merchant in Slough.)

How does the UK raise the extra revenue? Would income tax have to be increased? VAT? Saying that the UK has an overall tax problem is applicable. If the UK government would then have to increase the 22% IT rate to 27% to cover expenses, because they scrapped the ludicrious inheritance tax, then maybe the UK just spends too damn much money.

The British are hoodwinked that if government spending is lowered there will be roving amounts of homeless people. Honestly, I don't know how people in Britian are able to save anything with the high taxes and high cost of living.
 

Honestly, I don't know how people in Britian are able to save anything with the high taxes and high cost of living.

How patronising was that?
 

...its not the rich that get hurt. The REAL rich have the means to move their money offshore, etc. Do you think Richard Branson will be paying 40% of his wealth to the UK government when he dies?

Another red herring. Here's the analogue: the REAL cunning benefit fraudsters are not the ones that get caught. Only the low-level jokers do. Therefore we ought not to try and catch anyone pretending to be long-term sick. Something tells me that isn't an argument you'd want to make - and if it isn't, then your argument above can't be made either. Here's an alternative: we close some of these tax loopholes. If the super-rich wish to live elsewhere, fine. Though I'd like to see some of those Chelsea players try and fulfil their contracts on only 60 days in the country each year.

As for the rest: it's all nonsense unless you can come up with even one argument why inheritance tax is inherently more unjust than income tax. But you can't: a crude version the precise opposite is, in fact, much easier to make (income taxation = enforced labour for the state).
 

They are not red herrings. You failed to refute Here is a summary of the REAL arguments against IHT.

1. Double Taxation: The money was already taxed once. There was never a good argument to refute this. Jarndyce claims its "the transfer of money" that is being taxed. Well I'm against the double However, there are many other contexts where money transferred is not taxed.

2. Outrageous housing costs in Britian leave children forced to sell their house or come up with an outrageous tax bill. Jarndyce saying that "I'm finding it hard to lose sleep worrying about people sitting on that sort of property portfolio" is not a counter-argument. That's an emotional argument (you are mad that someone has more money) not a logical argument.

Although you imagine some imaginary easy-to-close loophole prevents the super-rich from moving money offshore, you will never be able to fairly apply this law in practice. It's theorectically nice, but flawed in practice. You are not going to get 40% of Richard Branson's money when he dies. Not going to happen.

Is the IHT inherently more unjust that income tax? Not necesarily alone, but two combined are unjust. So I'd argue for the IHT if only the income tax was scrapped.
 

No, you're talking rubbish. Point 1 was refuted by the ORIGINAL POST! Point 2 is refuted by pointing out that lots of (most) people in the UK have to get a morgage to buy a house anyway, so why is it fairer to allow the rich to inherit a house instead of making them take out a (small) morgage to pay the tax bill?
 

Doormat: what you said, plus, of course, nobody's making them take out a mortgage. They can always sell the house and pocket the (probably significant) equity instead.

Is the IHT inherently more unjust that income tax? Not necesarily alone, but two combined are unjust.

Until you can explain why, though, without using arguments that have already been shown to be empty, that's just an assertion and not worth arguing with.

(Oh, and it's frankly a bizarre suggestion that just because we can't stop every (perfectly legal) tax avoider, we shouldn't stop any. Why then have any laws, against murder, benefit fraud, and so on, and why have any tax on anything at all?)
 

Jardayce says: Oh, and it's frankly a bizarre [it is the bizarre bazaar] suggestion that just because we can't stop every (perfectly legal) tax avoider, we shouldn't stop any. Why then have any laws, against murder, benefit fraud, and so on, and why have any tax on anything at all?"

There is a big difference between a mala en se crime like murder and legal tax avoidance. The problem with taxes like the IHT (apart from the fact that taxes suck in general) is that the people to whom it is targeted the most(i.e. the super-rich) will have the easiest time avoiding it.

If the chosen targets of a tax (very rich people) end up not paying it while the upper middle class gets socked, is the tax truly "fair"?
 

Doormat, The original post was refuted by my original comment.

Regarding Point 2: Back to my example about the fisherman and his son who live in Aberdeen. External forces has caused housing prices to skyrocket. Now the fisherman, who certainly isnt rich, cannot afford his own house, nor can he easily afford any other in the area.

What would solve a lot of these problems is to RAISE the threshold from 285,000 to something a lot higher and include a index for inflation and include additional exemptions for primary housing. When was that 285,000 defined? 1972?

Jarndyce: ... we can't stop every... tax avoider, we shouldn't stop any
If you list the 100 richest people in Britian, I'd be a betting man that not one of those would pay 40% of their real net worth on their death.

At the end of the day, it's your country and its your inheritance that will be grossly taxed. But if y'all think its great and wonderful, have at it.
 

I doubt us Brit's inheritances will be grossly taxed, because by the time we kick the bucket everything will have been reformed to such an extent that we'll have to sell off all our assets to pay for medical care.
 

Since Jarndyce quotes his post on this subject, I'll flag up mine.

The first (which Jarndyce's second was a reply to), my reply to him and my most recent.

Let's lay out the basics. Firstly, if my father carefully husbands his wealth to pass onto me, that is not luck: it's called forethought. It's one of those things sets us apart from the beasts.

Your arguments for IHT are only valid if you think that the job of the government is to create equality, whether that is equality of opportunity or of outcome. If, like me, you think that government is purely there to run services that private enterprise should not (the justice system) or will not, there is absolutely no moral justification for IHT.

In any case, no one has any moral claim on the money that you earn. We cede a certain amount of what we earn in order that certain services can, at base, be run for our personal benefit.

As an aside, none of this alters the fact that all tax is theft; property taken forcibly from someone is theft. Thus tax is, in itself, immoral.

If you tax inheritance, you simultaneously discourage people from saving, thus ensuring that they become a burden on the state rather than paying their way as many with assets prefer to do.

Capital creates social mobility. Income is easy to earn, capital is much harder to acquire (otherwise we would not be having this argument). With capital, people can buy houses (a big market in Britain), start businesses, etc. without having to be in hock to banks. This is, in my opinion, a good thing.

Not that capital is ever inert - no one keeps their cash in a shoebox under the bed. That capital is what banks use, for instance, to fund businesses that have none of their own, or to refinance businesses that wish to invest to grow. That capital is put to good use in a way that, for instance, my personal bank account is not (because my money never stays in the bank!).

As has been pointed out already, even if you think that capital should be massively taxed, the really rich people that you are aiming at will avoid this tax. You simply make everybody else poorer.

Furthermore, taxes, in the main, pay for things that the rich have no need for and will almost certainly not use: the NHS, schools, benefit officers. How is it morally right to tax more those who do not use the services? Surely you should, in a fair world, tax only those who use the services? After all, if you buy something, you have to pay for it. Therefore, those who do not use services should, morally, be taxed less.

For the piddling amount of money that IHT raises, especially after money has been spent by the government calculating it (sending round probate officers, etc.) it causes a lot of bad feeling. You could raise roughly the same amount by eliminating fiscal churn, by doing things like setting public sector worker salaries slightly lower but not collecting tax on them, or by raising the Personal Allowance instead is pissing about with Tax Credits or by any number of other means. Leaving aside morality for a second, IHT is bad politics.

But most of all, why should one tax labour rather than forethought? Because that is the most equal way of doing things: everybody has to work and thus, logically, taxing work is fairer than taxing some and not others.

To take the taxing luck meme to a silly extreme, one should also tax those who born healthy more than those who are not. That's luck.

But, in any case, as I said: there is no luck involved in inheritance. It is forethought by those who deprive themselves in order to make better lives for their children.

DK
 

"As an aside, none of this alters the fact that all tax is theft; property taken forcibly from someone is theft. Thus tax is, in itself, immoral."

Why post anything else but this? If this is your position, then arguments for or against inheritance taxes are moot.

"Firstly, if my father carefully husbands his wealth to pass onto me, that is not luck: it's called forethought."

It is certainly luck on your part. Or are you capable of performing some sort of time travelling behaviour manipulation?

More, it matters little. So long as we have the principle of taxing wealth transfers, then we ought to tax inheritance. And, if any tax on a transfer ought be higher than any other, then the best candidate are unearned windfalls; the moral argument that as the income is the product of my labours it ought to belong solely to me does not apply here.

"Capital creates social mobility. Income is easy to earn, capital is much harder to acquire (otherwise we would not be having this argument). With capital, people can buy houses (a big market in Britain), start businesses, etc. without having to be in hock to banks. This is, in my opinion, a good thing."

Which is why taxing inheritance is so important, to everyone on the political spectrum that runs from socialists to meritocrats. If I inherit capital, and my otherwise identical double does not, then I will always be wealthier than him, and so will my children. My double has to be much 'better' than me in order to merely be my equal.

As for; we should only be taxed for what we use - what a vision of a brutal society. You are right to argue that the very people who use (at least, directly) public services are often the poorest. Thus, your argument is one that would strip away social provision.

But then, you are a brute, I have seen. Calling Muslims 'Koranimals', and contributing to a blog [The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller] where the genocide of the Afghan people is gleefully imagined. You are scum.
 

"To take the taxing luck meme to a silly extreme, one should also tax those who born healthy more than those who are not. That's luck."

It isn't a silly exreme. People with severe disabilities cannot possibly have the same options to them in terms of employment and opportunities to get rich. Therefore currently they do not pay as much tax as healthy people on the whole. They are also more likely to require the use of health and social security services paid for by government (healthy people's taxation). Are you suggesting that this is immoral?
 

Highly amusing to watch all these rightwing nutjobs wanking themselves into a fury of logic chopping trying to justify this.

The thing about capitalism is it's meant to be "fair" precisely because it does away with feudal notions of inherited power. Yet of course capitalism cannot deliver on its own promise - inherited wealth is crucial to reproducing the ruling class.

Hence lots of square-the-circle pious nonsense about the "forethought" of people "depriving themselves" to provide for their children - this notion that investment of surplus somehow equates to abstinence was of course very popular in the 19th century, and equally ludicrous as a justification for the status quo.
 

More, it matters little. So long as we have the principle of taxing wealth transfers, then we ought to tax inheritance.

We need to pay for the government and taxing wealth transfers happens to be the easiest way of doing it. There's no principle involved here.

And, if any tax on a transfer ought be higher than any other, then the best candidate are unearned windfalls;

As I said, everybody works, so the fairest method is to tax labour.

If I inherit capital, and my otherwise identical double does not, then I will always be wealthier than him, and so will my children. My double has to be much 'better' than me in order to merely be my equal.

Yes, and?

As for; we should only be taxed for what we use - what a vision of a brutal society. You are right to argue that the very people who use (at least, directly) public services are often the poorest. Thus, your argument is one that would strip away social provision.

Yes, that's right. Except that you were arguing about morals. Personally, I do think that we should ensure that people in our society do not starve to death, or die for want of an aspirin.

However, I think that it would be difficult to argue that the welfare state is working. As Chris at Strange Stuff has argued, there have been severe and unintended social consequences. Furthermore, it is rapidly becoming unaffordable in its current form. I favour a far more redical approach, i.e. giving people their money back through a very high Personal Allowance, amongst other things. But this is slightly O/T.

But then, you are a brute, I have seen. Calling Muslims 'Koranimals', and contributing to a blog [The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller] where the genocide of the Afghan people is gleefully imagined.

I think that you will find that that is the Rottweiler Puppy, who contributes to The Kitchen, who refers to them as "Koranimals". But come to think of it, for some that he applies it to, one can hardly argue. And I rather think -- sorry, I know -- that the A-I Rottie blog is written more than a little tongue-in-cheek (as is mine). And a comment here and there is hardly "contributing"; I can hardly help it if he picks up some of my posts now, can I?

You are scum.

And you, like most socialists, utterly lack a sense of humour. I'm happy to be called "scum" by you; I take it as a compliment.

DK
 

"These rich guys don't deserve so much money, so we're going to take it."

Sounds OK to me (and I'm going to be hit with a fucking enormous IHT bill if Mrs Gnu dies before me).
 

I'm blown away at how normal socialist thinking is to so many. Your defence for IHT is to make it a level playing field for A and B. Unbelievable! That reasoning has no end and is not a viable reason for a tax. Let's take it further we should make it level for the son of a doctor and the son of a garbage collector and not allow the doctor to use his money to send his son to an expensive university, we could tax him if he chooses to and the extra money he has to pay should go to the garbage collectors son. The thing is though I'm being sarcastic many would love to take this idea and do something with it since it will level the playing field even more.
In disbelief of your argument.
Danny Padilla
 

Is IHT payable by the donor or the receiver? If the receiver lives and resides in another counry, can he not pay IHT in the country of oriigin seeing as he is not liable to taxes there and pay them instead in his country of residence?