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Old 06-27-2008, 03:56 PM   #18
mcsluggo
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from an economic efficiency standpoint, inheritance tax easily beats all.

We don't need to worry about added disincentive to dying (we are all willing to accept any disincentive to dying that we can drum up), and it doesn't provide a disincentive to working.

I personally am for rewarding incentivising hard and efficient work, the building up of wealth has many spillover effects that generally benefit society (assuming the accumulation occurs within the "rules of teh game") because it requires industriusness and/or innovation, and general economic activity. There is a lot less obvious economic benefit to society from the next 40 generations spending that accumulated wealth.

I am not arguing that you should strip it all away, but as Alex says, if you are GOING to have to tax (and we are going to have to) then do it in a manner that is economically efficient and rewards work.


As to the amout (rate) question... would you really have an issue with a system that says:
tax nothing on the first $1 million in wealth transfer at death, then tax the next $10 million at x% and then tax all wealth over $10 million at z% (z >x )?
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