"I don't agree with estate or death duties. There are already tax collections on assets anyway. The CGT tax gets the profit tax so an estate tax is really an envy tax. The person has been taxed on all income, capital gains and consumption tax (via GST) so the only reason to tax an estate is when you are envious of their achievements" I agree with your views on estate duties, however, that is with the proviso that the person has in fact been taxed appropriately along the way. It is questionable whether capital gains , both with the family home and other assets, are appropriately taxed.
Let's say I leave an estate of 1 million dollars ,purely made up of savings from income from work and interest from bonds, then all tax has been paid. If I leave an estate of 1million, a mixture of shares and real estate, which I accumulated a large part of under concessional tax rates for cgt etc, I have paid considerably less tax.
Now I am not suggesting that a person using the 2nd method is immoral , he is just using the system that is presented to him by society. One could question however , whether the system is appropriate.
On a separate theme[not directed at you Joewolf] ,suggesting that there should not be changes in the way tax is collected, using the argument that the government just wastes our money, is infantile. If I believe a tax is inefficient, or has consequences that produce inefficiencies in the way our society and business functions, or is unfair, then it is irrelevant whether the overall government share of resources is 15, 20 or 60%. It needs changing. That is what this thread should be about. Thanks to a mix of super tax, cgt concessions , tax free thresholds, I pay very little income tax. A lot of my expenditure doesn't attract gst either. In a sensible world I would be on the top marginal rate, but courtesy of the present flawed system, I probably pay less tax than your average minimum wage earner[ just looked it up, a lot less], and I will continue to do so , as like Packer, I will pay the tax that I am up for, and no more. But I wont whine if society gets its act together and fixes the flaws.
