Of course, most readers of this forum will choke on the thought, but we in Australia have Premier Joh to thank for saving us from this injustice. Lets give credit where credit is due.

Inheritances of properties should be taxed if worth over a set threshold, like $1M, and other large inheritances should be taxed. We highly tax people's personal exertion earnings, but let them go lightly in respect of non-personal exertion earnings......a move seemingly calculated to advantage our middle and upper classes.

The really wealthy dont have to worry about IHT because they can protect their assets in tax havens and other structures, its the middle class who bear the brunt of this unfair tax. IHT benefits large corporations who dont die and therefore never have to pay. As time goes on, large corporations pay less tax and, more significantly, receive ever larger shares of corporate welfare - a recent US book estimated that they receive fives times more money from government handouts that they make in profit; http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1665737,00.html

Its no surprise then that nations with high corporate welfare rates like the UK, USA, France, and Germany, use inheritance tax to funnel funds from private taxpayers to industry; if the gaps between private and corporate income or capital gains tax were too large people would complain, but somehow IHT seems to slip under the radar.

I vividly remember being at Cape Danger, on the Queensland - New South Wales frontier, in 1978, and noting that there were several original border posts still surviving. I watched as a youth stood on the top of one of the posts, and thought how dangerous it was, and how easily he could fall and break his neck. Then I thought that if he did so, and fell onto the NSW side, his estate would be subject to death duties, whereas if he fell onto the Queensland side it would not. This made me an enthusiast for the Federation in which we live.

An inheritance tax frees up money stashed away by the very rich for use by the community. Of course people will work hard to protect their old age, but passing it on to the children to waste and squander is obscene.

Greed greed greed ! yah