Enriching, equalising, efficient: Why 'heinously unpopular' death taxes could actually be a good idea
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Australia is an outlier when it comes to death taxes, largely due to former Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
He started slowly, getting rid of probate duty in the early 1970s, before in March 1976 effectively abolishing overnight all of the state's inheritance and gift taxes.
It was partly aimed at wooing potential migrants from NSW and Victoria as Queensland sought to establish itself as the nation's low-tax state, although the lost revenue from the end of death duties was made up by other taxes (and generous grants and loans out of Canberra).
Bjelke-Petersen's decision forced all other states and Malcolm Fraser's federal government to follow suit with death duties gone by 1984.
But in the past decade, especially since the Global Financial Crisis, a few in the tax world have argued it is time for Australia to revisit death duties.
The Henry tax review, in a recommendation that was rejected immediately by both Labor and Coalition, said there were major reasons to consider what it termed a bequest tax.
It found "large asset accumulations" ended in the hands of a relatively small number of people, adding that bequests were likely to rise from $22 billion in 2010 to $85 billion in 2030.
That's a large sum of untaxed income at a time when demographic change means the tax impost on wage and salary earners is increasing.
The Henry report also noted the "efficiency" of bequest or inheritance taxes.
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