re: #724 Obdicut

Oh god, that’s so hard for me to answer, because I might lose the house that I love so dearly due to the estate tax. It’s also heavily related to my feelings on the capital gains tax— any time one kind of income is privileged above another, that kind of social engineering makes me a little annoyed. At the same time, I do think there’s economic utility in allowing a high floor for the inheritance tax. I would actually favor a higher rate and a higher floor— but perhaps not coincidentally, that would suit my particular situation just fine.

I’m not saying that i have the answers. I’m just saying that most of the arguments against the estate tax are either narrative arguments about particular situations, and not about the nature of inheritance itself, or are based on the ‘double taxation’ meme that I find completely unconvincing.

Interesting, and honest too. Thanks. To me, it’s about drawing a small, tight circle around a family and saying “we ought to be able to transfer monies between us in the privacy of our family”. Because, as you say, a family can transfer money back and forth all they want, but once they want to invest or spend it, they’ll be paying taxes on it. So the money’s still available for taxation, but there’s a tight circle of privacy there that I’d exempt from the harsh intrusion of taxation.