Honestly yes, I do think a 100% death tax with 0% tax during life (leave aside residential property) is the best solution but I know a lot of people will have issues with it. You take money from dead people who don't need it any more. You prevent the formation of decadent entrenched elites. I am not pro-"wealth redistribution" in the socialist sense. I am pro allowing elites to rise and fall, which they do not really do so in Europe. The rich can still educate their children, give them a huge head start, but once they are dead the children will have to depend on their own efforts. I agree with what Taleb says: The way to make society more equal is by forcing (through skin in the game) the rich to be subjected to the risk of exiting from the one percent Inequality itself is really not the problem. A "sticky" elite class with no downward mobility is. I mean most people who call themselves capitalist are pro-competition and anti-monopolies, especially monopolies with ties to government. Entrenched elites basically are monopolies.
Huge administration, who will check if the declarations are correct? What if your total net worth went down? Can you recover that loss somewhere? Or is it just your problem? For some people this will result in a continues loss of net worth because of taxation. They had this system in The Netherlands and it will be abolished. They had to pay 1.2% taxes ( 30% on a hypothetical net annual return of 4%) on their net total worth (with some exemptions). The problem was that many people did not make that return, not in stocks and surely not in term deposits, that give less than 0.5%. It was a systematic expropriation. Saving was equal to have less money later. They tried this last year in Belgium. Trading with holding periods shorter than 6 months had to be taxed at 33%. But there was an additional rule: LOSSES COULD NOT BE DEDUCTED. Result was that traders paid much more then 33%. If they made 100 profit in winning trades and lost 40 in losing trades, they should pay 33% on 100, not on 60 which was the net profit. So the real taxation was then 55%. Within 1 years the system was abolished as the changed behavior of traders caused no profit from taxation but an estimated loss of over 100 million Euro. Other taxes that where linked on trading went hugely down too. This leads to repetitive taxation of money already taxed before. When you die they tax, and the fortune you left behind goes to your heirs. When they die they are taxed again on the money that was already taxed. Each next generation will be taxed again and again on money that was already taxed before. In Belgium above 250,000 Euro tax is 27% for the children of the person who died. If you have no children and your brothers and sisters are the heirs, taxation is a whopping 65% above 125,000 Euro.
It's the "on top of" that makes the estate tax particularly repulsive. Make the death tax the ONLY tax and where do I sign?
On @Sig's defence, "cutted my ties" is also pretty poorly written... and it's life, not live... But you're forgiven for being a non-English native @Mtrader
defense is spelled with an s.... not a c.... i think lol... maybe not down under. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/defense
Defence vs. defense Defence and defense are different spellings of the same word. Defense is preferred in American English, and defence is preferred in all other main varieties of English, including Australian, British, and Canadian English. The spelling distinction extends to most derivatives of defence/defense, including defences/defenses and defenceless/defenseless. But the words defensive, defensiveness, and defensively have an s everywhere. OK... never mind ____________________ Though defense is now the American spelling, it is not American in origin. The OED and Google Books reveal examples of the spelling from as long ago as the 1300s, many centuries before the United States existed. That spelling continued to appear a fraction of the time through the 19th century, when it was taken up by American writers. Today, to the chagrin of those who dislike American English, the spelling is gaining ground throughout the English-speaking world.
I'm by no means criticizing grammer! The guy just couldn't decide what to countries he was trying to compare or tie that together into a coherent thought.