Alan Shatter's campaign to abolish Inheritance Tax

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Passing on what you own, and have paid tax on is, to me, the most acceptable form of family socialism/ leftism.
 
micheller said:
Passing on what you own, and have paid tax on is, to me, the most acceptable form of family socialism/ leftism.
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And that's why 3k a year from each parent, and the first 335k (and that can be expected to rise) of wealth beyond that, to each child, is tax free.

Only a small minority of, by definition, quite wealthy people will ever receive a gift or inheritance of a scale that will mean they have to pay the tax.

Since you can't bring it with you, the alternative to dying and leaving wealth to be taxed on inheritance is spending it. Well guess what, some kind of taxes will apply on that too (VAT mainly, but in a broader view, the payroll taxes and income taxes of the businesses you spent it in). Or of course, you can always leave money to charity, since they won't be taxed. There are choices aplenty.

I always like to think I have fairly middle of the road, conventional views on most things, but I really don't get the mindset that most people seem to have towards this tax. I think it's just about the fairest one we have. It raises about half a billion a year, almost exclusively from people in the wealthiest few percent of the population. If that's not socialist, I don't know what is.
 
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T McGibney said:
Yet if you inherit from an uncle or aunt, your tax free bequest won't extend to the price of a new car.

Where is the justice and equity in that?
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If one accepts Inheritance tax as a concept, it’s perfectly fair and just.

The State is differentiating between close family units and uncles/nephews/etc.

There are even provisions in the Taxes Acts which allow non-parents to be treated like parents in certain circumstances.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
If one accepts Inheritance tax as a concept, it’s perfectly fair and just.

The State is differentiating between close family units and uncles/nephews/etc.

There are even provisions in the Taxes Acts which allow non-parents to be treated like parents in certain circumstances.
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It is fundamentally different as you are treating two people completely different one who has offspring and one who does not.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
If one accepts Inheritance tax as a concept, it’s perfectly fair and just.

The State is differentiating between close family units and uncles/nephews/etc.

There are even provisions in the Taxes Acts which allow non-parents to be treated like parents in certain circumstances.
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Hardly. One sibling inherits €300,000 from a parent. No tax.
Another inherits the same sum from an aunt. Loses nearly a third of it.
Crazy state of affairs.
 
The Horseman said:
It is fundamentally different as you are treating two people completely different one who has offspring and one who does not.
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Isn't there something on the constitution about promoting the family unit? Seems the CAT exemptions are doing just that.
 
It will absolutely need to change in the coming years as our demographics change...there will be less families with children and less children per family so people will demand change to a tax that assumes the same family types that were formed 30 years ago and before. And also to correct the requirement of legal marriage that allows tax free transfers between committed partners.
 
The Horseman said:
It is fundamentally different as you are treating two people completely different one who has offspring and one who does not.
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You’re making the fatal mistake again. CAT is levied on the receiver not the giver. The person dying pays 0 CAT…because they are dead

So your statement should read, you are discriminating against people who don’t have parents vs those who do…fringe cases I expect
 
T McGibney said:
Hardly. One sibling inherits €300,000 from a parent. No tax.
Another inherits the same sum from an aunt. Loses nearly a third of it.
Crazy state of affairs.
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I actually would have no issue with there just being a lifetime limit regardless of the source of the inheritance, that would seem reasonable enough. If I was starting from scratch I'd probably have a lifetime limit of €500k with some sort of indexation.
 
Zion2022 said:
You’re making the fatal mistake again. CAT is levied on the receiver not the giver. The person dying pays 0 CAT…because they are dead

So your statement should read, you are discriminating against people who don’t have parents vs those who do…fringe cases I expect
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I am well aware how the tax is charged. Every child has a parent. Not every person is a parent. But every person is someone's child.
 
T McGibney said:
Hardly. One sibling inherits €300,000 from a parent. No tax.
Another inherits the same sum from an aunt. Loses nearly a third of it.
Crazy state of affairs.
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It’s pretty clearly about the relationship the recipient had to the donor. And the immediate family unit versus people outside of that. It makes perfect sense. Money given to my daughter is different to money given to my niece.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
It’s a tax on beneficiaries. So there is no child of someone who can’t have children who’s being discriminated against.
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It is discriminatory on the receiptent and the donor. A neice/nephew can be seen as a child of a childless couple. But because they are not their biological child they are discriminated against in terms of threshold limits.
 
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