[bruce511]

They're not getting 5m, that's the point. They're inheriting an asset which may be valued at 5m. Like a farm, or a house, or a painting or whatever.

Forcing the sale of family property or assets does not serve any good in the long term.

[dataflow]

> Forcing the sale of family property or assets does not serve any good in the long term.

How is carrying the cost basis forward without stepping it up "forcing a sale"?

[saltcured]

It is under a system where ownership transfers are treated as taxable events. The recipient needs to pay the taxes, but cannot afford to without liquidating the inherited asset.

I think you just need to propose a set of related rules changes. Replace the inheritance basis step-up with a similarly scoped rule that says this inheritance does not count as a taxable ownership transfer, so taxes are not due at that point.

You may also need new rules for estimating the basis when records are lost across multiple inheritance events?

The current system is a bit like a tax foregiveness jubilee, but dribbled out to individual families rather than synchronized across the whole economy. It resets things so that regular people can function in this system, without requiring all the family accounting and records keeping of some aristocratic dynasty.

[mikeyouse]

Forcing people to "Sell the family Farm" has been used by estate-tax detractors for so long that there are multiple special programs in place to ensure it never happens (interest-free loans, etc). Given that the current limits are over $13M per person or $26M/couple where zero tax is owed, I don't think this "woe is us" routine resonates any more.

[bruce511]

That's exactly my point. The current system is working. We explicitly don't want to go to the place where inheritance forces a sale.