Listen to Adam Smith: inheritance tax is good

Politics trumps economics. That’s the best summary of the Tory and Labour competition to pander to those who until now have been threatened with paying to the Treasury a portion of the money they receive for just ‘being there’.

Let’s de-emotionalise this issue. An inheritance tax is not a death duty. The slogan ‘No taxation without respiration’ is too clever by half. Even a Chancellor of the Exchequer as powerful as the previous occupant of the office could not get a corpse to sign a cheque. It is a tax paid by the recipient of this income, the inheritor, the lucky winner in the sperm lottery.

Nor, finally, is it a tax on a lifetime of thrift. In most cases the wealth being taxed results from a rise in the value of houses — not something brought about by the acumen and hard work of the owner, but by a decade of low interest rates and economic growth, or the good fortune of having a public amenity plunked down in the neighbourhood.