Things people do to avoid taxes

[usmbguest5318]

Of all the taxes there are, the one I detest most is the inheritance tax. I do because while taxing the resource-transfer transaction whereby income earned by "Party A" is later paid to "Party B" as compensation for "B's" enterprising efforts on "A's" behalf does not bother me, the notion that inheriting resources from another is somehow income does not sit well with me. I am of the mind that just as life insurance proceeds (not the interest earned on the proceeds) are not required inclusions in gross income, neither should be inheritance proceeds.

As I see it, decedents purchased life insurance benefits just as they purchased the assets their bequeathals. There are several material considerations regarding the nature of life insurance proceeds and that of inherited assets:

1. The direct provider of inherited assets is an individual rather than a firm.
2. Life insurance proceeds, like income, are always bartered for or purchased using fungible assets, whereas inheritances are probably never thus purchased or bartered for. (Maybe there're people who "contract" to do "X" in exchange for being bequeathed "this or that?" I wouldn't fathom folks do that, but I suppose anything's possible.) That's so not only for business income, but also for personal income. For example, the skills and abilities one has and that one exploits to generate income were purchased on one's behalf by someone or by some several/many individuals; they did not inure to anyone as might the wind blow a dollar bill into one's lap. Even one's so-called natural abilities must be honed in order for one to use them to generate income; somebody paid for that to happen.
3. The monies used to obtain bequeathed assets and insurance policies were taxed when the decedent earned them.
4. Income results largely from pluck, not luck. The same cannot nearly as aptly be said about inheritances.
5. Insurance proceeds are always cash. Inheritance proceeds are often a mix of cash, cash equivalents, and non-cash/cash equivalent property.

Given the foregoing, my sense of equity requires that either both be taxed or neither be taxed. I prefer the latter, but I wouldn't advocate vociferously against the former were that how the tax code be written.

Apparently two individuals feel at least somewhat as I do, though I cannot say I'd adopt the same tax avoidance approach they did. Be that as it may, I take no exception with their having done so.

• Two heterosexual men marry to avoid inheritance tax

 

[gipper]

This article was posted yesterday, but I appreciate and agree with you sentiments.