"a savings account left to offspring?"
'Per se'? No.
'In general'? No.
I am still convinced that taxing *extremely* large (say: top 0.5 percentile or so of wealth, or even higher....) accumulations of wealth, when they are transfered by inheritance to others, what used to be called 'unearned wealth' by our Puritan forefathers, would, in general, be *better* for society then taxing productive working members of society ('earned wealth') would be.
In short (& crudely)... it would be better to tax rich playboys and louts (who had nothing at all to do with the building of the store of wealth), newly enriched by the death of a hard-working/smart/and-or-lucky relative, who *did* have a lot to do with the wealth accumulation --- then it would be, from the point-of-view of society, to raise taxes on any individual within their OWN life.
The benefits for avoiding Plutocracy, a stagnant economy, and wastrel lives, are probably CONSIDERABLE.
On the otherhand, I don't believe I am dogmatic about this, and I certainly wouldn't consider the estate tax to be the *primary* tax used to finance government... while it is a significant tax, it's still secondary to others in it's net revenue.
So, I'd be quite willing to trade away the entire estate tax system in a political deal to achieve a truly fair FLAT RATE income tax system without loopholes or 'special tax preference items' or other exclusions.
Because, in a truly loophole-free flat rate system, it would 'all come out in the wash', and even 'wastrels' would wind up carrying the same tax load as anyone else, and there would be no particular need for targeted taxes such as this... so I'd have no problem making that swap at all. |
