Inheritance is not about the children.
You ask whose labour is seized by a 100% death tax? The parents' labour. That's obvious enough that I feel I must be missing something. What was your (presumably?) rhetorical question supposed to make me consider?
Inheritance is a way to get people to contribute towards prosperity for the future of the human race...by convincing them to contribute towards the prosperity of Bob, their beloved son. Maybe you don't need a personal connection to take selfless actions, but that's not universal: I bet that a 100% death tax world would have a lot more golf courses and cruise ships funded by reverse mortgages and premature sales of family businesses.
A low inheritance tax tells people that they can have a direct impact on a cause they care about (usually their children) after their death. A 100% death tax tells people that they can have as much of an impact as typical government funding on the causes the government spends money on.
I know which one would motivate me to be a better steward of my wealth.
At the point of death, presumably, the person whose labour is seized does not exist. I think that's a good point to consider, since I also estimate that a significant amount of resistance to the idea of no inheritance assumes the dead person's will is a moral factor after their death.
I tend to agree that in such a world there would be more consumption rather than saving approaching old age, but I'm not sure that's a problem or how big of a problem that is, and there are ways for governments to nudge that ratio through monetary policy.
I also don't agree that you're effectively limiting people's power of affecting causes they care about to what the government would do with the money, since people have other causes they care about besides their offspring, even if to a lesser degree, and are free to spend their money while alive to advance those.
A relevant point I don't have an opinion on is whether the offsprings of a person are better stewards of that person's former wealth than the government. There's the question of whether being the offspring of someone wealthy is casual for being more financially proficient than the average citizen, and the (major) question of the overhead in dissolving existing businesses and functional assets.
At the point of death, presumably, the person whose labour is seized does not exist. I think that's a good point to consider, since I also estimate that a significant amount of resistance to the idea of no inheritance assumes the dead person's will is a moral factor after their death.
Yes, I make that assumption. I believe I'm in very good company there, with both the general public and (many, but not all) decision theories/moral systems recognizing agreements that carry on past death. Why would you think otherwise?
I also don't agree that you're effectively limiting people's power of affecting causes they care about to what the government would do with the money, since people have other causes they care about besides their offspring, even if to a lesser degree, and...
I'm not quite sure what this post's hypothetical is supposed to be, but sure. Let's say that charitable donations are fully exempt from the tax.
People don't care about charity to any substantial extent. Donation rates are around 4%, whereas raising a child averages 15%ish per child for nearly half of a parent's career, never mind the non-financial investments in their wellbeing. It's not a complete restriction on giving, but it cuts out the most important one in many peoples' lives.
Allowing for charitable donations as an alternative to simple taxation does shift the needle a bit but not enough to substantially alter the argument IMO.
... are free to spend their money while alive to advance those.
No, they absolutely are not. Spending your money before your death is heavily constrained by uncertainty. The chance of sudden unexpected death between 20-64 totals about 1.5% (calculated from here), and the anti-loophole protections would catch more. Even outside of the worst-case scenarios, you will always die before a sufficiently-optimistic estimate (and if you aren't optimistic enough? Have fun living out your last days while completely broke, I guess.)
A relevant point I don't have an opinion on is whether the offsprings of a person are better stewards of that person's former wealth than the government.
To be clear, I was talking about the parents being good stewards by managing the wealth for the benefit of future generations (i.e. Bob, and perhaps his kids). I have opinions about how effective the government would be compared to the children, but those differences pale in comparison to tearing everything down to get the last drop of value out before you die and lose it all.
Allowing for charitable donations as an alternative to simple taxation does shift the needle a bit but not enough to substantially alter the argument IMO.
Not to mention that allowing for charitable donations as an alternative would likely lead to everyone setting up charities for their parents to donate to.
I personally recommend that all parents donate to the Localdeity Enrichment Fund, an important yet frequently overlooked cause area.
The resistance to such a policy is largely about ideology rather than about feasibility. It is about the quiet but pervasive belief that those born into privilege should remain there.
I don't think this is true at all. There is an ideological argument for inheritance, but it's not the one you're giving.
The ideological argument is that in a system with private property, people should be able to spend the money they earn in the ways they want, and one of the things people most want is to spend money on their children. The important person served by inheritance law is the person who made the money, not their inheritors (who you rightly point out didn't do anything).
In practice, a lot of property is transferred into family trusts, and appointed family members exercise decision making over those assets according to the rules of that trust. A 100% death tax would simply ensure that essentially all property is managed in this manner for the adequately wealthy, and only impact families too disadvantaged to use this sort of structure. If you don't personally own anything of note at the time of your death, your taxes will be minimal.
You would also need a 100% gift tax, essentially prohibiting all gifts between private citizens. You bought your child something, or (worse!) gave them money to buy it themselves? That's clearly an attempt to get around inheritance tax and must be prevented.
There are also huge numbers of private businesses, for which this sort of tax would be nothing but an enormous micromanaging nationalization scheme with predictable disastrous results.
This does not work, at all.
Death tax without a gift tax would simply be a tax on people who die unexpectedly. Because if you know that you are going to die tomorrow, you can donate all your belongings to your children today.
Even if you don't know the exact day, if you trust your children, you can simply donate them everything now, and then continue living in a house they legally own, etc. (Though then you are screwed if your children die before you. But this just means that the system introduces a lot of randomness.)
Oh, and if you have a 100% gift tax, you also need to make all kinds of helping each other illegal. Not only you shouldn't give you children money, you shouldn't even give them food, probably not even good advice, if you want to be consistent. Otherwise we get all kinds of tax loopholes, such as allowing your adult children live in a house that you own (so they can save the money they would otherwise spend on rent or buying their own house), or babysitting your grandchildren for free (so that your children can save money they would spend on babysitters). Cooking for your children, helping them fix things, etc., all tax loopholes.
I agree with you that, if we need to tax something to pay for our government services, then inheritance tax is arguably not a terrible choice.
But a lot of your arguments seem a bit problematic to me. First, as a point of basic practicality, why 100%? Couldn't most of your aims be achieved with a lesser percentage? That would also smooth out weird edge cases.
There is something fundamentally compelling about the idea that every generation should start fresh, free from the accumulated advantages or disadvantages of their ancestors.
This quote stood out to me as interesting. I know this isn't what you meant, but as a society it would be really weird to collectively decide "don't give the next generation fire, they need to start fresh and rediscover that for themselves. We shouldn't give them the accumulated advantages of their ancestors, send them to the wilderness and let them start fresh!".
Also, sometimes inequality functions a bit like division of labor.
Imagine that everyone has 11 units of resources, and you need 20 to start a project. Compare to a situation where most people have 10 units of resources and one person has 30. There is no guarantee that the rich person will start the project, but the chances are probably higher than in the first scenario.
I am not sure that example fully makes sense. If trade is possible then two people with 11 units of resources can get together and do a cost 20 project. That is why companies have shares, they let people chip in so you can make a Suez Canal even if no single person on Earth is rich enough to afford a Suez Canal.
I suppose in extreme cases where everyone is on or near the breadline some of that "Stag Hunt" vs "Rabbit Hunt" stuff could apply.
Ah, I meant something like people have 11 units of resources, but they need ~10 to survive, so 10 of them would have to invest all their savings... which is unlikely to happen, because coordination is hard.
You are right that companies with shares are the way to overcome it. I was thinking deeper in history, where e.g. science could only happen because someone had a rich sponsor. Without the rich sponsors, science probably would not have happened; Newton would be too busy picking the apples. Only a small fraction of rich people becomes sponsors of science, but it's better than nothing.
Perfect equality could mean that if somehow things go wrong, they will go equally wrong for everyone, so no one will have the slack necessary to find the way out... is my intuition about this scenario.
The world changes when wealth is not locked away in trust funds but directed toward the collective advancement of society. The benefits are not theoretical; research consistently shows that high social mobility correlates with stronger economies, more resilient democracies, and greater national well-being.
Error: causation being inferred from correlation. Totally unwarranted!
Family-run businesses, often cited as collateral damage in such discussions, could be granted transitional arrangements to ensure they remain viable while still upholding the principle that wealth should not be inherited unearned.
If you want to argue that, actually say how the arrangement should look like.
A tax structure would need to close these gaps, treating all lifetime wealth transfers as taxable events
If you say 100% death tax and want to treat all lifetime wealth transfers as taxable events, do you mean nobody is allowed to give any wealth away?
No birthday gifts at all? No donations to charity where someone transfers wealth to charity?
This seems... evil or at the very least zero-sum thinking to me.
Would you want to stop the successful from paying for their children's education? Spending their time on raising their children? Do you want to take all children away from their parents to make sure they aren't put on different footing? Perhaps genetically enforce equality?
I would much rather governments try to preserve hereditary positive dynamics, while getting involved with negative ones.
We'll have won once all trees are positive and successful, and bad apples do not create generations of bad trees
There is something fundamentally compelling about the idea that every generation should start fresh, free from the accumulated advantages or disadvantages of their ancestors.
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The death tax does not punish success—it prevents success from becoming hereditary. It ensures that the cycle of opportunity begins anew with each generation.The idea that wealth should be inherited is so ingrained in our thinking that we rarely question it. But step back for a moment, and it becomes a curious thing—this notion that assets, land, fortunes should be passed down from one generation to the next without scrutiny. The debate over wealth distribution is usually framed in extremes: on one side, Marxism, condemning private inheritance as exploitation, advocating for collective ownership. On the other, laissez-faire capitalism, defending property rights even when they entrench privilege. A 100% death tax emerges as a synthesis of these views rather than an attack on individual success. It preserves incentives for personal achievement while preventing wealth from pooling in the hands of those who have done nothing to earn it.
The idea is not as radical as it seems. Consider John Rawls, who argued that many of the advantages we inherit—wealth, talent, social position—are arbitrary. Society should not reward the accident of birth.[1] Robert Nozick, a staunch defender of individual liberty, saw taxation on inheritance as a violation of property rights, the state interfering in the fruits of one's labour. But the question remains: whose labour? The transfer of wealth through inheritance bypasses the effort that property is meant to represent. Even Locke’s notion of property, grounded in labour, seems at odds with the idea that wealth can simply be handed down. If wealth is to be earned, it must be earned by those who receive it, not those who bequeath it.
There is something fundamentally compelling about the idea that every generation should start fresh, free from the accumulated advantages or disadvantages of their ancestors. We talk often about meritocracy, but do we really mean it? Vast fortunes pass from one generation to the next without regard to effort or ability. A child born into wealth enters a world cushioned against failure, while another, equally capable, is born into struggle. The death tax does not punish success—it prevents success from becoming hereditary. It ensures that the cycle of opportunity begins anew with each generation.
This is largely a matter of economic dynamism. Societies with greater social mobility tend to be more innovative. Capital is not hoarded within dynastic families but recirculated, reinvested into public goods—education, healthcare, infrastructure. The world changes when wealth is not locked away in trust funds but directed toward the collective advancement of society. The benefits are not theoretical; research consistently shows that high social mobility correlates with stronger economies, more resilient democracies, and greater national well-being.
Of course, implementing such a system requires careful thought. Inheritance often comes in the form of assets, not cash—family businesses, real estate, art. A fair system of valuation is essential, and practical accommodations—installment payments, deferred taxation—could prevent disruption. There will be resistance, as there always is when privilege is challenged. Some will seek loopholes, stashing wealth offshore or transferring it through trusts. A tax structure would need to close these gaps, treating all lifetime wealth transfers as taxable events. Family-run businesses, often cited as collateral damage in such discussions, could be granted transitional arrangements to ensure they remain viable while still upholding the principle that wealth should not be inherited unearned.
We have built tax systems before, have adjusted them as necessary, have refined our methods for assessing and collecting wealth. A phased implementation, clear reinvestment strategies, and public transparency would help smooth the transition. At first glance, it seems like an obvious corrective, a step toward true equality of opportunity. But radical reforms do not fail because they are unappealing in the abstract; they fail because reality is less pliable than idealism.
The hardest problems in inheritance reform define its limits, and its hardest problems are formidable indeed. The resistance to such a policy is largely about ideology rather than about feasibility. It is about the quiet but pervasive belief that those born into privilege should remain there.
Of course, one may argue that inheritance is the most efficient prior we have of distributing wealth based on who is most likely to be competent, due to autocorrelation between generations. But I think it's fairly clear to see why this is a shaky argument indeed.