Why inheritance is the dirty secret of the middle classes – harder to talk about than sex

So every SF voter hasn’t had an inheritance you’re claiming??

Interesting theory.

33% tax to be paid. On property paid for and taxed to death. Also property tax per annum. Especially unfair on an only child!

Depends.

If you bought a house that's increased hugely in value due for example to public infrastructure being built nearby then you can't really complain about inheritance tax.

If you got a house cheaply or free from the public purse then you can't really complain.

Most houses have gone up crazily in value, due to no work on behalf of the owners. Just in the right place at the right time. Now in the event of a crash the prices will drop and so will inheritance tax.

And people want it both ways ....expensive housing they own AND somewhere their kids can afford to buy or rent.

It's a strange economy we live in and it is definitely geared towards homeowners.

Personally I wish my kids could afford somewhere of good quality to rent while they are young and free, and invest in education and businesses and not have to be haunted by the spectre of housing in this country or worry about that **** housing ladder and have to live with their parents for years.

It's the hole in this country where energy and dreams go to die.

Inheritance tax should be done away with, period. Everywhere. It’s the most unethical tax of them all.

It’s actually theft in my book.

whatever a son or daughter inherit. Many levels, multiple levels of tax has been applied to that money already. Someone dies…and the government returns for yet another grab…

it is an absolutely miserable precedent, especially the rate at which it’s applied, 33%.

” ohh you just lost your Dad and your mother is dead ! Ok, cough up one third of their assets / your inheritance, everything they worked to amass, yes we’ve taxed it but the last grab, promise, one third please ! cheers ! “

It's 100% true in England and becoming more and more true in Ireland. Inheritance is sometimes needed to secure housing and even sometimes jobs and education through networks and private schools. This in turn leads to a class of people owning their houses through their parent's, often in receipt of educational advantage in the form of private education and in some rare cases working in daddy's law firm.

It's not just money. Efforts are being made to combat educational advantages in private schools but there's not much we can or should do about the rest (unless it's families employing each other in the public sector). However, what I find fascinating is that those who were most in receipt of these lucky advantages often have a strange sense of entitlement about it and rarely credit their success to these things. Conversely, this seems to inform their opinion about those who aren't so lucky in life and often the vastly inherited claim the less well off "simply made the wrong choices in life". Sometimes it's enough to acknowledge that certain people have their success partly due to inheritance.

This is changing in education after the publication of a series of studies stating that if you two students, one from state school, one from private school with the same grade in their leaving cert/A-levels, the state school students do far in university. Therefore, the private school A-levels in overvalued. https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/news/state-school-pupils-do-better-at-university-cambridge-assessment-research-confirms/

Inheritance tax is the most ethical tax there is.

A person is receiving a sizeable transfer of wealth that they did not personally earn. There are large thresholds under which the rate is zero

All money is taxed multiple times.

Taxing unearned income is absolutely the right thing to do.

Go earn your own instead of sponging off your parents

Indeed. I think we should tax the multi-generational inheritors, not those inheriting small sums.

we already do, and rightly so.

I think inheritance should be abolished.

why should the children or the wife’s of a hard working man who worked hard all his life and put his children through college and for the daughter who was not very bright Organise a sectorial course and then got the local councilor to get her a job behind the bar - why should these ungrateful family members get his stuff for nothing after all the hardship they put him through ringing him at all hours looking for him to pick them up from the disco

the dependents can go and sh1te in my book

incorrect, most money has not all. But the fact in death.. the government come for another third of everything… dismal.