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.
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.
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.