Posted: Mar 26, 2014 9:14 pm
Beatsong wrote:Emmeline wrote:I don't agree with inheritance tax at all. People already pay tax on their earnings/income & that's enough. I've always thought it was outrageous for the state to take a slice of people's money after they die. If I were wealthy (I'm not) I'd be doing everything possible to put my money where the government couldn't get it.
I'm used to attitudes like lak's as the expression of a peculiarly American libertarianism. But how can you, as a Brit, not see or care about the connection between inheritance of wealth and the deep class-based, structural inequalities in our society? Inheritance tax is currently paid by 3% of estates. Do you seriously think that at that level, they're all the estates of heart-warming rags-to-riches heroes who managed to managed to beat the odds to leave a nice fortune for their kids? (And that those kids then, for some reason, deserve a start in life several orders of magnitude better than everyone else).
This is not about hard working people providing a reasonable start for their kids. It's about ensuring that a tiny minority of families born into the privilege of not having to work at all, are able to stay that way.
The threshold for inheritance tax is £325,000 so there will be plenty of people leaving under a £million, split between their children and/or grandchildren. These aren't people "born into the privilege of not having to work at all" and "able to stay that way".
For the very small minority leaving a fortune well so what? It's their money not the government's money so they should be able to leave it entirely as they wish. I know that it perpetuates privilege but if I were rich, I'd want to pass that on to my family (not the government) so I can't in all honesty begrudge others from doing the same.