Inheritance Tax

October 11, 2007 Blogs & Blogging, General Rants, Political 6

I’d been meaning to comment on inheritance tax, but I really couldn’t have put it better than James over at Nourishing Obscurity:

There are the majority who work as best they can and take what opportunities arise, fall back, go forward again, marry, have a family and slowly build a nest egg. Some have huge nest eggs and most average.

Along comes someone else and swipes half of it to become a drop in the ocean of bloated governmental wastage and the people who actually put in the hard work lose.

This is iniquity. This is institutionalized greed. This is the easy and casual way one section of our society greedily eyes the fruits of other people’s labours and wants it redistributed to themselves. If they went and took it at gunpoint, they’d be in prison so they let the government do it for them.

It’s not redistibution to the needy at all – it’s redistribution to the lazy, the complainers, the moaners, the sit on your butt and do nothings.

I’d add; institutionalised grave robbing, for that is the moral equivalent. This is money that has been taxed during the deceased’s lifetime, it is money that the deceased has prepared for his or her family’s future. Being forced to sell or mortgage the family home at a time of grief underpins just how deeply abhorrent is this tax. The spiteful, envious greed of the socialist is writ large in inheritance tax.

 
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6 Comments

  3. And this for a man who said he was in the Labour party!

    The Express, Mail, Torygraph and Murdoch papers have persuaded large numbers of people that IHT is bad, just as the rich owned media in the US did.

    If you want decent public services and most people do, then you have to have taxes. It seems fairer to tax those who die and pass on a large windfall to their children than say something like VAT or Council Tax (both of which are taxes on taxed income but unlike IHT put the tax burden on those least able to afford it).

    IHT is tax on unearned income, this nails the lie that right-wingers believe in merit – if you oppose IHT you clearly believe in maintaining privilege not merit. There is no hardship involved with IHT. Someone was receiving £300k completely tax free – how could that be hardship? The average house price in the UK is £210k, only 6%, yes 6 piddling % pay this tax. It only hits the very richest. Even the average house in London is only £354k, are you telling me it is beyond someone inheriting a £354k house to take out a £21k mortgage to pay this tax because that is all they have to pay? You have all been conned. We have just given a massive tax cut to lazy millionaire layabouts who moan more than any socialist ever has. At least those in the poorer half of the population has a reason to moan, not these people.

  4. Kindly refrain from patronising me and assuming that I am influenced by the press. I disapproved of IHT when I was in the Labour party and before, because it is immoral and I could clearly see that it is immoral. This is money (that has been explained to you on your blog) that people have earned for their family. Having been taxed already, it is perfectly reasonable that they should keep it. As for the bollocks about public services, this tax is a drop in a very large ocean of government waste. If we want decent public services (and presumably we do) then reducing the size of the government and therefore its spending ability is a decent start. After all, we would have several billion immediately if we scrap the ID cards scheme – that money is surely better spent on frontline healthcare, education, defence or policing.

    this nails the lie that right-wingers believe in merit – if you oppose IHT you clearly believe in maintaining privilege not merit

    This is a red herring. IHT has absolutely nothing to do with merit; it is about punishing people for being who they are.

    As for your comment about taking out a mortgage – you have to be earning enough to pay for it. You assume in your arrogance that someone left with a £300k house is earning enough. Why should they have to sell it to feed the greedy coffers of envious control freaks such as you?

    We have just given a massive tax cut to lazy millionaire layabouts who moan more than any socialist ever has. At least those in the poorer half of the population has a reason to moan, not these people.

    Who says they are lazy layabouts? Where is your evidence for this slur? Come to that, who says we are talking about millionaires? Once more you dish out your lazy assertions and sweeping generalisations with no evidence to back them up; merely envy, spite and greed.

    It is, without doubt the most immoral tax invented – invented because people like you cannot abide others doing well.

  5. So VAT and council tax should be scrapped by your argument about ‘already taxed income’? These taxes cause far more hardship than IHT. Do you deny this?

    Look, even someone on the dole could get a mortgage of £21k inheriting over 350k in assets. Or a part time job would pay this sort of mortgage. Or perhaps you think they should be able to sit on the dole doing nothing living off their parent’s windfall? Some believer in morals, hard work and merit you are.

  6. Have you tried getting a mortgage lately? You have to have an income to support it – as an aside, my sister came close at one point to being trapped in this situation, so I have some understanding of how it is not the “rich” who can find themselves on the wrong end of this invidious tax.

    Or perhaps you think they should be able to sit on the dole doing nothing living off their parent’s windfall? Some believer in morals, hard work and merit you are.

    No, I simply recognise that many hard working people don’t earn very much. That was the situation my sister was in. Had my parents died at that time, she would have been left in the family home and a tax bill that could only have been paid by selling it and making her homeless or raising a mortgage that she had no means of servicing and as I and her other siblings were not particularly well off, we couldn’t have helped with a mortgage either.

    However, that is another red herring – the morality of taxing someone on this basis just doesn’t stack up. Double taxation is immoral, however it is raised. Forcing someone into debt in order to give the government more money is deeply immoral, no matter how you look at it.

    As for the council tax and VAT, these too, are bad taxes. A tax system needs to be fair and these are not. I would prefer to see a tax on spending rather than income; particularly if it is on a sliding scale with essentials being exempt and luxury goods being at the top end of the scale. That way, the more wealthy who have a greater disposable income to spend on luxury goods will pay more and the less well off may avoid tax completely. That, though, would rely on a government having the gumption to abolish income tax. Not to mention, slashing their departments and spendthrift ways.

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