On 2010-12-22, Tom Gardner wrote:
All that wealth has been taxed already. The nose in the tent will expand
to 100% death tax in short order if some have their way. It's simple wealth
redistribution from the productive to the unproductive.

Any inheritance IS redistribution of wealth, from parents to
children. If both parents and children are productive persons, then
inheritance is distributing wealth from productive persons to
prductive. If the children are not productive, then inheritance means
distributing wealth from productive to unproductive.

Productive is a big word, too. I am productive when it comes to
computer programming. If, hypothetically, my parents owned a large
farm, then I would not be a productive owner of said farm. If I did
not sell it, the hypothetical farm would probably decline.

On balance, based on my economics education, I think that auctioning
off a part of an estate to the highest bidder, leads to more
productive use of the property than passing wholly to children, who
are essentially random persons (winners of the ovarian lottery) when
it comes to managing property.

Since taking 100% of the wealth at death is a too big deterrent to
saving, the golden middle probably lies somewhere in between taxing
all and taxing nothing. Personally, I think that the fairest tax is
somewhere under 50%, but close, I would settle on 45%.

Regular people, like you and me (yes I have seen your factory on
google maps and go to such factory auctions often), are not impacted by
current thresholds of estate taxes. Those somewhat above the
threshold, can do a lot to reduce their estate tax bill.

i