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Context: Sam Pitroda’s trending comment today.

First of all, is it really true that a capitalist country like the US takes 55% of a deceased person’s wealth, as the media is reporting? If yes, that’s a superb policy and shows that even capitalist societies believe in equitable wealth distribution.

Now, coming to India, why not have a policy here? It’s constitutionally valid because the right to property is no longer a fundamental right and the DPSP indirectly supports the idea. Imagine if we take 55% of Aakash Ambani or Karan Adani or Paridhi Shroff’s inheritance. So many milllions will be instantly lifted out of poverty!
Trust me those who actually need it won't get even 10% of it. It would be used to build some project on PPP model and common man would anyway have to bear the brunt.
Not really. We can have tax slabs where people below a sudden level of assets will not be charged any tax, then 10%, 20%, and finally a max slab of 45-50%.

Inheritance tax will go a long way in correcting wealth inequality. There are maharajas in Rajasthan who live their entire life on generational wealth. This will make them work and will ultimately benefit the society.
Kian, I request you to please make the moderation fair and transparent. You can clearly see biased left-liberal voting, biased left-liberal moderation. Abuse against the RW is overlooked but factual comments criticising the left are shadow-banned and downvoted.
If you do this, the rich will simply put their wealth into trusts with a dedicated lineage of beneficiaries. And this will avoid paying any tax whatsoever. Most rich people already transfer wealth through trusts.

Therefore, nothing will really be collected from the inheritance of rich people. Of course, this can be corrected if the movement of wealth to trusts is taxed. However, doing this will undoubtedly open a different can of worms vis-à-vis financial sponsor investments and other aspects of corporate laws. Therefore, I highly doubt this will be done.

For the middle class and poor, who already don't have much, and either cant afford private client lawyers and estate planners for putting things into trust or will not have the knowledge to do so, will lose money under this mechanism. Effectively, people who have very little will lose the most.

This reminds me of the minimum balance fiasco, where the lowest of the low lost butt-loads of money to the banks owing to either lack of wealth or knowledge.

And in any case, its not like there will be a direct transfer of wealth. Irrespective of who is in the government, the recovered wealth will largely either be directly pocketed by our public servants or largely distributed to capitalist friends of the government or a mix of both.

These plans seem nice on paper but hardly have any effect! Populism will truly be the death of all of us. The early years of our democracy clearly shows that when the government comes for a big chunk of public money (that time it was through insane income taxes), the government really does not get the money, people just engage in corruption!

But what do I know!
Inheritance tax will at best affect the top 1% of people so it really won't be an electoral issue.

Anyway, as per the standard definition of "merit", you don't deserve anything you did not work for. The same logic should apply to your parent's property.

Inheritance tax does not prevent people from liquidating their properties or doing anything with it during their life time.
Nope, absolutely.

The root if this was from the industrial revolution during which Europe was seized with a heady mix of conflicting influences from the church, the governments and the capitalists during which the labor was cheap because of the general population was largely poor, less educated and looking for opportunities to getting the economic benefits of industrial revolution. Capitalists colluded with the governments and maximized their profits at the cost of cheap but hard labor. In the backdrop of lack of interest either from the government or from the church the labor was taken for granted that led to birth of socialism orchestrated by Carl Marx.

It definitely helped overcome the exploitation of the labor class through socialist/ communist movements that spread and found roots across the world. Now the situation is pretty changed for good with the level of improved knowledge of the social systems among the workers and exploitation is hardly a means achieve any tangible objectives.

So forget about redistribution of resources/ wealth or whatever muck you call it, even your street vendor would pounce at you if you ever talk about govt confiscating someone's wealth for redistribution.