To think it’s unfair that some people get inheritance while others start with nothing?

@Feelinadequate23 how do you account for the fact that the UK has some of the most unaffordable housing stock and yet also one of the harshest IHT regimes of any country?

There are countries with zero IHT and comparable income tax rates to the UK where housing is more affordable. I think it would be difficult to make the case that inheritance is the driving force behind housing unaffordable in the UK - there are so many other factors.

Life isn't fair

But we should structure society to try and avoid the worst of unfairness not embed it

@TizerorFizz There was lots of slum clearance after the wars as well. I was living in a slum that was not demolished until 1973.
And there was a lot of bombing in London which destroyed housing during the second world war. It is why there was a big programme of social housing building after the war.

Slums were cleared before the war. Lots of inter war council housing. However I’d say £20,000 for any adult to have is great. Of course not everyone wants to buy in London. That’s a 10% deposit here!

Not in the thirties. Most was built after the second world war and bombing damaging so much housing in London.

Life isn’t fair.

You can say that about any privilege that offered a leg up.

If we all went about pointing out areas of our life that were unfair in comparison to others, it would be a miserable life.

All these comments of "I worked hard, so damn right I'll pass something on to my children!" Don't you realise that the £20k you give to your kids won't do all that much for them precisely because Monty and Prunella etc in London have been able to give £1.5m to each of their kids, raising prices for everyone else? Your kids wouldn't need a helping hand if hand-me-downs weren't allowed for those richer than you.

Yep, they're being entirely deceived about who benefits and who suffers in a world where increasingly there really is no point in working hard as you will never never catch up with the people who can buy for cash. House prices are distorted and the job market is undermined.

I am a classic worked hard and did well story but I just don't think it's doable now. I lived in London, did an evening class to retrain and now earn well and have a nice house. So much harder now - I couldn't have paid for college because I would have been trying to cover a crazy rent payment. I also worked INSANE hours as a trainee in a city law firm. Like, really silly - all nighters as standard. But there was a "proper" payoff of a reasonable lifestyle. Why anyone would bother now I have no idea. The work your arse off and then reap the rewards isn't there now.

The depressing thing about this thread is that it shows lots of ordinary people with modest amounts to pass on genuinely don't understand that their children are actually being harmed by inheritance, not benefitting from it!

All these comments of "I worked hard, so damn right I'll pass something on to my children!" Don't you realise that the £20k you give to your kids won't do all that much for them precisely because Monty and Prunella etc in London have been able to give £1.5m to each of their kids, raising prices for everyone else? Your kids wouldn't need a helping hand if hand-me-downs weren't allowed for those richer than you.

Also, receiving an inheritance doesn't necessarily make you any happier, which is surely everyone's goal for their children? Earning well and having purpose in life, along with strong family/friendship ties is what we should be striving for (except in cases of disability/incapacity where dependents actually need money from their parents for survival).

Not that much of an outlier in terms of IHT according to this

List of countries by inheritance tax rates - Wikipedia (there may be small print saying it is very limited in application, I've not looked)

and some have wealth taxes too

Wealth Taxes in Europe, 2024 | Tax Foundation

My godmother paid 1k for a 3 bed flat in Balham in the 40s.

And there was a lot more social housing in inner London.

Sorry I did not know that. It must have been a better paid job than we imagine, because by 1939, 31% of people owned their own homes. And house ownership increased during the 30's. My grandparents were like most people, in privately rented housing.
It is true there are areas in London that are now expensive, that at one time were seen as horrible places to live. In the 1960s Finsbury Park was full of immigrants and very poor people living in rented accommodation. Rents were cheap.

@JoyousGreyOrca my DHs parents bought in Hackney on one salary in the 80s. My parents did similar. Lots of London was not like how it is now...

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER indeed that is true - my FIL is ex BBC but technical - and many of his colleagues in their 40s in the 70s and early80s with SAH wives and on equivalent of about £50 - 60k a year had big terraces and semis in Chiswick and Hammersmith - and no they hadn't inherited at that point

I don't know about people being able to buy houses on modest incomes in the 30s and 40s.

My mum's parents always rented terraced houses - in a not particularly lovely home counties town. My grandfather was a printer, my granny worked in a toothbrush factory. They didn't 'own' a house until they retired in the 1960s when mum and dad (who did do well) helped buy them a bungalow. Anecdata is a tricky area.

It’s not fiction! It’s the true story of Raymond Briggs’ parents.
You have evidently completely missed my point, which was the extent to which houses used to be far more affordable for people on very modest salaries.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER Are you really quoting a fictional story as evidence?
According to your criteria young people should be able to afford to rent a large terraced house in the East End of London on wages from working in a cafe and running a fruit and veg stall that gets hardly any customers - Eastenders.
Fictional stories are just that, fictional. And stories aimed at kids often have the parents doing jobs the children will recognise such as milkman, rather than well paid ones they will not, such as an actuary.

So presumably, if inheritance was abolished, this would then be taxed at 100% on death of the giver, regardless of when it was given.

Yes, one fairly modest salary was one enough to buy a family house.

As anyone who’s read Ethel and Ernest will know, Raymond Briggs’ (The Snowman) parents were, during the pre war 30s, able to buy a 3 bed terraced house in Wimbledon, on just one milkman’s salary.

Dh grew up in a nearby area, and has identified the road. Such houses now routinely sell for around £1m.

That’s already the case. You can give your kids as much as you like from capital and they won’t pay tax on it as long as you live for seven years afterwards. That amounts to “policing”.

I have read some (but not all) of the thread. The thing is, how involved do you want the government to get in your life? If you pay taxes on time while alive and commit no crimes, perhaps you should be left alone to do what you like with your money. I know that the OP refers to heavily taxing or abolishing inheritance but in reality this will also mean policing what people hand to their children while still alive.

Well unsurprisingly I think this should be changed too!

That's a pretty high bar though, if you can only buy a house if both halves of a couple are unusually high earning. I bought a flat in zone 2 in early 2000s while working as a PA and DH worked in an off licence. The barrier to home ownership now seems absurd to me. DS will be ok as I have a million pounds of equity in my house now with quite a lot of that built out from me buying at the right time. I still would rather say a somewhat more level playing field.

Obviously life isn't ever going to be totally fair but I don't see why we should let perfect be the enemy of good.

Wipeywipe was not being hypocritical. She was making the point that when people argue against inheritance tax on the basis that it reduces the incentive to work, they forget that income tax does the same thing (to a much greater extent, I believe). And if you increased inheritance/wealth tax then you could reduce income tax to some extent.

What the OP and other proponents of increasing the IHT or "abolishing inheritance" should be questioning is why we still have laws that allow the crown, for example, to benefit from the estates of those who had no relatives and never left any will. Why is it not the state so keen on taxing the public at every turn because apparently there is never enough money for any public services that collects this for the benefit of those public services?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/23/revealed-king-charles-secretly-profiting-from-the-assets-of-dead-citizens