> But then inheritance cough sorry "estate" tax kicks in so ... I'm not actually seeing the problem?
"Estate tax" is basically a tax on people who die before they do "estate planning". It's a sham that generates less than 1% of federal revenue, and most of that not from billionaires but from upper middle class families who didn't realize they would be subject to it or otherwise died without making advance preparations for it.
One of the most common cases it actually gets collected is when someone dies relatively young, because those are the people most likely to have not shielded their assets from it yet, which is one of the reasons "death tax" is a pretty appropriate moniker for it.
It's also one of the reasons that UBI + consumption tax works really well: Put your assets into whatever box you want, transfer them to your kids however you want, you're still paying the consumption tax when you buy something.
"Estate tax" is basically a tax on people who die before they do "estate planning". It's a sham that generates less than 1% of federal revenue, and most of that not from billionaires but from upper middle class families who didn't realize they would be subject to it or otherwise died without making advance preparations for it.
One of the most common cases it actually gets collected is when someone dies relatively young, because those are the people most likely to have not shielded their assets from it yet, which is one of the reasons "death tax" is a pretty appropriate moniker for it.
It's also one of the reasons that UBI + consumption tax works really well: Put your assets into whatever box you want, transfer them to your kids however you want, you're still paying the consumption tax when you buy something.