Following on from yesterday's post, I'd like to suggest a better form that Inheritance Tax could take. As discussed, it's a good tax in that it will rarely cause hardship for the payer - even the person inheriting wealth will, in most cases, not *need* the money.
But it could be said to be a bad tax in that it perpetuates unfairness in our society - the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. So, to correct that, why not just tax inherited money on the recipient, treating it as just another slice of their income? That way, the wealthy pay more on inherited funds than the poor, and there is an incentive to spread legacies out across a number of recipients, sharing the wealth more widely.
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