Inheritance Tax

This gem of a blog was flagged to me by the Moai this morning. And the post on Inheritance Tax got me thinking. Of course, most blogs already have posted on this, but fuck it. This blog is all about my opinions, so I will put in my two cents in as well. It may have been said elsewhere, and it may have been said in a more concise or witty way but, you know what, I don't care.

Tax in itself is an evil, but a neccessary evil. Inheritance Tax is just plain evil. You are taxing people for dying and for having money to leave behind.

Don't get me wrong, Inheritance Tax probably won't affect me directly. I don't have any kids (that I am aware of), and most of my salary is pissed away in pub toilets meaning my legacy to the world will be a pickled liver. Sure, my parents do have some money but I have every faith that my Dad will find a way to minimise the impact of inheritance tax. After all, he hates giving money away to anyone, let alone a grasping government.

But the tax itself is just plain wrong. Think about your money. You are paid your salary each month, and pay income tax and national insurance (it is a tax, just with a different name). You buy something, and pay VAT. Or, if it is a house, Stamp Duty. And at the end of the year the tax man will probably claim you have underpaid your tax for the year, so you pay tax yet again. And when you die, if you are relatively prosperous (ie with an estate of £285,000 - something that would not even get you a studio flat in Central London), you pay tax yet again. Now don't know how tax works in detail but if you pay inheritance tax, that money has already been taxed at least four times before. If Blair et al want to see why we complain about stealth taxes then should read the above.

And what about the ethical dimension? Suppose I lost my watch and saw a watch on a dead man. What would people say if I went up and took the watch off the corpse and walked away? ie if I robbed from the dead. Because, that is all Inheritance Tax is. It is robbing from the dead, and robbing from the bereaved. Utterly immoral.

A Treasury spokesman (sorry, spokesperson) is quoted on the BBC as saying:

"Anyone who wants to abolish it needs to explain exactly how they plan to fund the £3.6bn cost - the equivalent to more than 1p on income tax, or 18p on petrol duty, and almost double what we are spending this year on counter-terrorism and security."

What sort of half baked crap is that? Let us follow that train of thought - we cannot abolish any tax because we don't know how to replace the funding. I'm sorry, but what the fuck? How about reducing spending?!?! I realise that is too much for the tax and spend Gordon Brown but... And just because something is difficult to replace doesn't justify it in the first place. Imagine the Allies after World War Two saying "you know what, it is going to be difficult to replace the Third Reich so you know what, perhaps the Third Reich was OK in the first place!" It is the same, numb headed, half baked logic.

Inheritance tax is wrong, and should be abolished, preferably through a reduction in spending. For once in his trivial, pathetic life Byers has said something worth hearing...