Outright Theft

Taxes and Theft

Here’s a little snippet that caught my eye briefly, then buzzed around in my subconscious until it turned into a raging tornado.

Inheritance tax receipts increased to £5.2billion in the eight months from April to November, data from HM Revenue & Customs reveals.

This marks a £400million increase from the same period a year ago, and continues the upward trend over the last decade.

Last month, the Chancellor shied away from slashing inheritance tax in the Autumn Statement, as it emerged the levy is on track to raise nearly £10billion a year by the end of the decade.

The body text concerns me hardly at all because it’s Britishland, and for centuries their governments have always stolen from the country’s wealthier citizens.

It was really just the first two words which snagged me like an errant fish hook.

Here’s how it’s defined by our own beloved IRS:

The Estate Tax is a tax on your right to transfer property at your death. It consists of an accounting of everything you own or have certain interests in at the date of death. The fair market value of these items is used, not necessarily what you paid for them or what their values were when you acquired them.

There are a whole bunch more words which on the surface are supposed to clarify the matter, but which in true IRS form serve only to create more questions, to be clarified by tax accountants and lawyers, and which can be re-interpreted (in the State’s interests, natch) by IRS agents in any way they choose.

Yeah, you have a right to transfer property — your own private property, how nice that they call it a “right” — but that right can be taxed (is it then still a right?) because reasons.

Basically, the State is saying that your private property isn’t really yours, it belongs to the State and therefore they are entitled to a piece of it.

Yeah, I know, it really only applies to “the rich” and we little peasants shouldn’t worry our silly little heads about it.  (The ceiling for application of the death tax is currently set at an estate value greater than $13.6 million.)

Even among people not affected by the estate tax, it is one of the most hated taxes in the nation.  Worse still, it used to cost the State more in the collection thereof than the income it generated — in fact, it only recently “broke even”, and now the revenue : cost relationship stands at something like 1.24 ($1.24 dollars is collected for every dollar it costs to collect it).

If ever there’s a piece of governmental thievery which needs to be taken outside and shot in the back of the neck, this one is it.  (Don’t even ask me about the politicians who support it and the government agents who collect it, because my response would put me on the Naughty List.)

Yes I know, there is a difference between “inheritance” taxes and “estate” taxes.  Regardless of how the godless IRS defines it or how/when it gets collected, however, the principle is the same for both.

19 comments

  1. Same here in the Netherlands. Death tax is 50%, but by the grace of the tax agency you get a discount on that if you’re the widow(er) or child of the deceased in which case you pay “only” 25%.
    And there is no lower limit to the taxable amount, every cent is taxed.

  2. Here in the U.S. They added a “Generation Skipping Tax”. Should you decide to leave a portion of your estate to members of the 2nd Generation as well as your children there is an additional tax. They did however recently increase the floor so the first $13 Million is not Taxed.

    Not that it helped me.

      1. Concentrating it in the hands of the elites.
        Because you little people are just messy – you do not know how to run your lives.
        We do.
        So sit down, move into your 15-minute city, eat the bugs and SHUT UP

  5. “Tax” is the thief’s way of palliating the retarded. It is a noble gesture to thwart thieves anyway possible and I have already taken measures to prevent them from stealing mine. It is an ongoing and constant effort.

  6. unless I have it totally incorrect (somebody please correct me) as the government prints more money faster, the less the dollar that I earned yesterday will buy/purchase.
    the house I purchased in 1960 for $150k is now selling for over $1.5m and each ounce of gold that I purchased in 1965 for $35.50/ is now worth over $2k.
    my heirs aren’t being taxed on my holdings; they’re being taxed on government-induced inflation.

    1. It is a bit more complicated than that. Like everything else, it is supply vs demand. So, it is how much they create (or destroy – they do that too – neither actually involves printing the money or burning it per se) and how much demand there is for money.

      So when, the Fed raises the discount rate, it pushes down the for money, which pushes down inflation over time.

      The velocity matters too, and other things. It also matters where the money is going. Keynesian economics emphasized stimulating demand (which is inflationary), supply side economics emphasized stimulating production/productivity (supply) which is actually mikdly deflationary over the long term.

      Like anything, you can do it right or wrong and get different results based on the details.

      1. TNX, understood (as by a STEM post-grad).
        I tend to look at money matters through my oversimplification spectacles, but I’m still overjoyed I purchased some amount of precious metals (not Ag) back in the ’60s.

  7. Back when Inheritance Tax (IHT) was introduced in the UK, over the past many hundreds of years wealth was becoming constrained to fewer and fewer families. The idea was, paradoxically, to spread the wealth. But they went about it in absolutely the wrong way. Currently it is what is left that is taxed, not what each person inherits. Tax the latter – over a certain amount (£10M comes to mind) – like regular income and you will achieve the original objective.

    I actually wrote to Sunak suggesting this when he was Chancellor; I didn’t receive so much as a pro-forma acknowledgement.

    2. You could make a case for use taxes, if they were competently managed, which they never are.

      For instance, fuel taxes that are used directly for road maintenance. Taxes to support police and fire services (again, competence is questionable.)

      Beyond that, I got nothin’

      1. ” fuel taxes that are used directly for road maintenance.”

        No they are not. Not even close. About 86 cents a gallon is collected in state and federal gas Tax on the 135 Billion gallons of gas used in the US last year. Did you see $ 100 Billion spent on Road Maintenace??

        Thoose Taxes get vacuumed into the General Fund to pay for pretty much anything that can be remotely linked to Transportation.

    3. The ones that behave as “User Fees”.

      If you use it you pay for it, if you don’t, you don’t.

      How could anything be simpler?

      But fair and simple are never the gov’t goals.

  9. Since the Fed can just print money without limit, then why are we paying any taxes at all?

    JQ

    1. Tell me that you went to Harvard/Yale/an Ivy without telling me that you went to Harvard/Yale/an Ivy.

      1. I wouldn’t go to any of those cesspits. I studied engineering and few of the Ivies have a good engineering program.

        JQ

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