US Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said: “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Those certainties have driven our debate about inheritance tax.
So is inheritance tax Britain’s most unfair tax? In my view, it's emphatically not.
Let me start by declaring a prejudice. I had wonderful loving parents who gave me the greatest start in life.
But financially they didn’t leave anything to me because they didn’t have it to give.
And I’ve never seen therefore why inheritance is some inalienable right, never to be taxed.
Yes, I understand the emotional pull of passing on wealth to your children and grandchildren and, in a sense, cementing your legacy. But not to be taxed, however large your wealth? No way.
But I don’t deny opposing inheritance tax has political traction.
When George Osborne, as Shadow Chancellor in 2007, announced a commitment to reduce inheritance tax, it narrowed the polls in the Tories’ favour and spooked Gordon Brown into not calling an early General Election he might have won.
And polling still shows cutting inheritance tax to be popular.
By a margin of two to one, people who declare a view say inheritance tax is unfair.
There is resentment at what they see as double taxation. “You pay taxes throughout your working life, then you are taxed again when you die.”
Yet so-called double taxation is not unique to inheritance tax. You are taxed on your income and then pay tax again when you buy goods and services through VAT.
But there is a very noisy campaign against inheritance tax by the rich and powerful, who have vested interests.
And it distorts the reality of inheritance tax. Only four per cent of people face inheritance tax, but 31 per cent think they will have to pay.
The reality is very far from inheritance tax being punitive or affecting more than a relative handful of the wealthiest in society.
A married couple can pass on £1million to their children and grandchildren completely free of tax. It is only wealth above £1million that is taxed.
And a big element of inherited wealth over the last 40 years has been unearned, driven by the house price boom. Inheritance also cements and entrenches inequality.
If we scrapped inheritance tax (and don’t bet against a desperate Tory Party promising to do that in their manifesto), half of the benefit would go exclusively to people in London and the South East where house prices are highest.
Exacerbating the north/south divide. So much for levelling up!
And inheritance tax raises big money. £7.5billion today. It's set to rise to £15 billion over the next decade because people who die over the next 10 years will be wealthier than those who’ve died in the past.
£15billion is 25 per cent of the schools budget. So scrapping inheritance tax would result in other taxes going up, or big further cuts in public services already ravaged by austerity.
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An absence of inheritance tax creates moral hazard, promoting dependency because people rely on inherited wealth rather than working hard and creating their own success.
Public opinion is also more nuanced about inheritance tax than its noisy opponents with vested interests would have you believe.
Yes, the tax is unpopular. But in terms of priorities for tax cuts, polling shows income tax for low earners, council tax and VAT are far more preferred to be cut.
The reality is that inheritance tax is a tax on extremely wealthy people and the money raised helps to fund programs to tackle the emergence of inequalities much earlier in life.
If you want decent public services and a fairer society, that has to be paid for.
Inheritance tax is one of the best and most effective taxes to achieve that.
