Inheritance tax is one of those issues where logic and reason is usually, and entirely correctly, trumped by emotion. It is not dissimilar, really, to the British and their Monarchy: There is no logical reason for Monarchy. You would not invent it today. And yet, many tens of millions of our neighbours are very deeply attached to Monarchy for emotional and patriotic reasons. And it is precisely because they are attached to it for emotional reasons, and because it inspires those emotions, that Monarchy is in fact good; at least for them. People need things to be attached to, and to fight for, and to give them something to believe in. It matters not if the thing itself is a little illogical and intellectually problematic.
Just like inheritance.
We usually claim to aspire to a society of equality and opportunity. If you were designing such a society, with a blank page and had never met a human being, or understood one, then it’s obvious what the inheritance tax rate would be: 100%.
The very notion that somebody should have more advantages in life than somebody else because of what their parents gave them is intellectually repugnant to the idea of equality, and republicanism. We would build a better society, possibly, if everything was just seized upon death, and the proceeds used to build a better country for everyone. That’s the communist, socialist, left take on inheritance tax. And to their credit, intellectually, it works.
But like a great many left wing ideas – and some of those on the right – just because an idea makes sense on paper does not make it good. Inheritance tax, after all, ignores something fundamental in the human spirit: the desire to give our children a better world, and better opportunities in the world, than those which we had ourselves. That is why people work, and save, and don’t just spend all of their money on champagne and caviar and holidays. It is what gives them purpose.
And besides, all the arguments for inheritance tax are just as easily applied elsewhere: If it is wrong to leave property and assets to one’s children upon death, why is it not also wrong to get your child a grind for their exams? Or to give them a deposit for a house? Or, really, even feed them healthy food when some other children live on chicken nuggets and chips? As ever, if you want equality, it is always much easier to level down rather than level up. That is why communist societies tend to be relatively equal, but relatively poor.
There are, of course, lots of other arguments against inheritance tax: Most prominently, the notion that they money left when you die has already been taxed at the time it was earned. Inheritance tax just taxes it again. But correct though those other arguments are, they are not the reason raising inheritance tax is so politically dangerous.
It is dangerous because it is an attack on the very purpose of living. It is an attack, directly, on all those people who have struggled and strived and denied themselves things in the cause of making a better life for their children. Those who, like so many parents and grandparents in this country, feel pride in what they leave behind, and take comfort in knowing that their loss will not leave their families without.
That it is not logical, in terms of how you might wish to organise a perfectly equal society is the point. Not everything is, or must be, about how egalitarian the public realm is. Some things, we do just for us. Not for the betterment of the world. That’s why life is fun.
The Government, it seems, is set on ignoring the latest recommendation to increase inheritance tax dramatically. That, I think, is very wise.