What Libertarians (Should) Think About Inheritance Taxation

DOI
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Recently, there has been an effort to make libertarianism compatible with a redistributive inheritance tax: When the tax is levied, the taxpayer in question is already dead and as such she cannot be a bearer of rights. The state is therefore allowed to redistribute the (value of) the estate according to some distributive principle. I consider (and finally dismiss) four successive arguments, each concluding that the state is allowed to use the estate for redistributive purposes. I show that neither of them is able to reconcile (right-) libertarianism with a redistributive inheritance tax. Instead of trying to square the circle, proponents of such a tax should meet the theoretical essentials of (right-) libertarianism head-on.
Date Issued
2022-09-05
Publication Type
Article
Subject(s)
Language(s)
en
Author(s)
Additional Credits
Journal
Res publica
Publisher
Springer
ISSN
1572-8692
Access(Rights)
open.access
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