The New York Times, October 15, 2019: Rich Kids Can Spare Some Of Their Inheritance
In America, if you play by the rules, working to earn a living and saving to provide for the future, taxes take a piece of your earnings. If you win a state lottery, you owe tax. But if you get lucky in the lottery of life and land an inheritance, you owe no federal tax. That isn’t fair, is it? Extending the federal tax code to include inheritances would end that inequity. Inheritance taxes — regulated differently in the states that have them — are a levy paid by a person who inherits money or property of a person who has died.
Extreme inequality is troubling both because it fosters gross and wasteful consumption and because it undermines the principle of political equality: Nearly unencumbered transfers of wealth permitted under current law perpetuate those imbalances, creating dynasties of the rich and hampering economic and social mobility.
