Below are inheritance taxes if you were to receive €50k from an uncle. They are typically higher if you receive from anyone more distantly related or unrelated.
Countries WITH Inheritance Tax:
France 🇫🇷
- Tax-free threshold: €7,967 for nephews/nieces
- Tax rate: 55% flat rate on amounts above threshold
- Tax owed: €23,118 (55% of €42,033)
Germany 🇩🇪
- Tax-free threshold: €20,000 (Tax Class II)
- Tax rate: 15-43% progressive
- Tax owed: €4,500 (15% of €30,000 at lowest bracket)
Ireland 🇮🇪
- Tax-free threshold: €32,500 (Group B: siblings, nieces, nephews)
- Tax rate on excess: 33%
- Tax owed: €5,775 (33% of €17,500)
Belgium 🇧🇪
- Tax-free threshold: Very low (varies by region)
- Tax rate: 25-80% (varies significantly by region)
- Tax owed: Approximately €10,000-€25,000 depending on region
Spain 🇪🇸
- Tax-free threshold: Minimal
- Tax rate: 40-69% for uncles/nephews (Group III)
- Tax owed: Approximately €20,000-€34,500 (varies by region)
Countries WITHOUT Inheritance Tax:
United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Note: Estate tax, not inheritance tax (paid by estate before distribution)
- Threshold: £325,000 estate exemption
- Tax rate: 40% on estates above threshold
- Likely tax owed: €0 (if estate under threshold)
Notice that they are high, especially for people with a high net worth and few beneficiaries.
Millennials are going to get old, and with fewer siblings than their parents had they will also have fewer nieces and nephews.
Fewer children, in a lot of states, means more inheritance tax revenue. But fewer children also means fewer future taxpayers, and more immigration which has its own associated costs.
I think there is one kind of wealth tax that might actually work, even if it wouldn't be popular amongst some/many Bitcoiners. I think it would work because it would directly target the looming crisis of demographic collapse.
What I'm proposing is not a direct wealth tax, but a wealth tax via the back door. Governments know that childless high net worth individuals are a windfall, because inheritance taxes are far higher when they don't pass to children. In some places there are motions to allow people to grant their estate to grandchildren, nephews and nieces, as they fill the void left by the children that passed away or never came to be. These will never pass because states need that windfall, it's the only way they can avoid or reduce direct wealth taxes.
But what if states were smarter that this, what if they were pronatalist? What if retirees got tax relief on income and capital gains depending upon the number of grandchildren that they have, and if childless people could 'adopt' families by putting their capital in a specifically designed trust so that those families inherited their estates, taxed as if they were their own children?
This would lead to direct redistribution in a pronatalist progressive tax policy, but with the benefit that the wealthy person chooses the families, partially based upon the number of children, but also based upon their values and prospects as stewards of that capital.
This might split the wealthy down the middle, between those with a stake in the future, and those who just want a bigger pile than the average Joe.
Its either this, or the future is a dead millennial found weeks or months after they had a stroke in their kitchen, by a chap walking his dog.