Not just family farms but communities where people live…the price of land bears no relation in what it can produce economically…farmers purchase land in the context of 30/40 years time frame …not to flip an asset after 5/10 years
The most obvious problem is that the successor farmer or business person doesn't properly own the business assets if there is a permanent mortgage on them, so for example banks won't accept them as collateral, and any sale of say a site for whatever reason is going to be fraught with difficulty.
Fair enough, I think we do disagree. I think that if I make some incremental effort to earn an extra €100k, and I’m left with only €48k, I should be free to gift that money to my kids, or indeed to you, and it should be nobody’s business. Tax paid cash in my back pocket should be mine to do whatever I want with.
Would it not be better if you paid 30% of that extra €100k in tax and whomever you gave it to also paid 30%?
I do buy the double taxation argument but I apply it to everything. I don't understand why people don't have a problem with a marginal tax rate of over 50% but do have a problem with inheritance tax.
You choose to buy a pint, from a business person trading to make a taxable profit.
So I have to earn an additional €12 to buy a €4.34 pint of beer. The State takes the rest in taxes.
You can give it as a loan and forgive the interest each year as a gift worth less than €3000.
We have to decide what sort of society we want and construct our taxation system in a way that funds it but also does the social engineering that only taxation can do. We currently have a system with very high social transfers, very high marginal tax rates on work and very low taxes on wealth. I think that's utterly screwed up.
would a wealth tax where accumulation of "a good income" after a substantial portion is taken in tax already is taxed again not discourage one from bothering to "acquire skills [and] work hard"?
The wealth tax would also tax inheritances and other unearned wealth. The point is that you'd retain more of what you earned so you could decide to save it or spend it or whatever and if you have and invested it you'd have more of your income to save and invest so the pot you ended up with would be bigger.
"would also" but it will still tax savings. Then there is the remarkably penal taxation on investments with 41% exit tax and deemed disposal means the tax take on savings is quite substantial as it is.
Yea, that should be looked at but if income taxes are lower working people have more agency over their own money. I'll be more careful about how I spend my money than the State will so I'd rather spend it myself instead of the State taking it and spending it on me. I always think Children's allowance is a great example; the State takes €200 a month from you in taxes and gives it back to you less their handling fee. I'd rather that they didn't take it in the first place. That's just an example, not a rabbit hole.