Scrap This Tax On Death

First of all, sorry for the long absence of posts. I havenot been well lately, so haven’t been able to blog as I had wanted. But now, back to business as normal. The papers and ConservativeHome have both been going crazy about inheritance tax, which has got to be the most unfair and sick form of taxation ever invented.

Any value of estate valued upon its owners death as more than £285,000 is taxed at a grossly unfair 40%, raising around £3.6bln per year for Gordon Brown’s coffers. In comparison Britain’s yearly EU membership fees are around £4.8bln, the European Central Bank estimates the government wastes £80bln per year, and total tax revenues are around £520bln per year.

A Populus/BBC poll this March put public support for IHT very low. Just 25% found it “fair” compared to 73% who found it “unfair”. It currently affects 1.5 million households and will affect 4.2 million by 2020. It is not a tax on the rich, but on anyone who has saved, invested and worked hard all their lives. They have already been taxed, so it is therefore a double tax. Furthermore it is extremely disgusting and morally wrong to force relatives to pay this huge sum, often needing to sell the property to do so, at such a sad time.

But it is also fundamentally wrong, as well as morally wrong. The tax implies that after death, the individuals assets can be taken by the state, and thus that they belong to the state in the long term overall, thereby degrading the past owner’s property rights to a mere life long lease. Property belongs to the individual, not the state, and the individual should be free to do whatever he/she wishes with their assets in their will.

Supporters of inheritance taxes, including Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in America (both to be highly respected as businessmen and the greatest philanthropists of our age if not all time), state that IHT stops long term dynastic wealth. But it is not the state’s right to stop this. The original creator of that wealth owned that wealth, and should be free to spent it or hand it down to whomever he/she likes, who should then be free to do likewise. It is, in short, not the state’s property nor anyone elses.