[bawolff]

> In the very brodest sense, anything that involves turning I realizing gains into liquidity will be taxed.

Sure, but there is a very very big difference between capital gains tax and inheritence tax. Most proposals for inheritence tax are on the entire value of the property being inherited. Capital gains taxes are just on the difference in value between when you got it and when you sold it.

If every transfer of property behaved like an inheritence tax, the economy would probably screech to a halt as you effectively couldn't sell anything without taking a huge hit.

[johnnyanmac]

Sure, the person is dead so they won't need the assets anymore. That's why inheritance tax is so large. Not so much for capital gains that still has a (concept of a ) human that has other utilities to pay off.

I don't see the downside unless you think it's fine for children to simply millionaires for being related to one.

[bawolff]

My point is more - if you make inheritence have a large tax but just giving things to family members a small tax, people will just gift their assets before death.

Any tax plan that requires people to be stupid in order to be taxed is a bad one because then the only people who get taxed are poor people who can't afford to hire an accountant to figure these things out for them.

The obvious way to close that loophole would be to tax capital gains at the same way as inheritence, but the side effects of that seem disasterous.

> I don't see the downside unless you think it's fine for children to simply millionaires for being related to one.

I think the downside is that the actual affect of the plan would be that really rich people would be unaffected, and if anyone was actually taxed it would be low-mid income people. Thus further cementing inequality.