On 17 September 2024, the Irish Times reported Alan Shatter hasn’t “given thought” to election bid as he seeks revolt over inheritance tax.

There are many things that can be said for and against each type of tax.

Four days later, on 21 September 2024, The Journal used a loaded question in a headline, asking FactCheck: Is it true that only about 3% of people pay tax on inheritance in Ireland?

The Journal’s article does not mention the word inflation even once.

Some of the big concerns about inheritance tax:

  • the threshold doesn’t automatically increase with inflation
  • the privacy of a testator’s will means that beneficiaries do not always have a lot of certainty about their inheritance, therefore, they can not fully plan their affairs around it
  • in most cases, the time of death will not be known very clearly in advance and this also makes it difficult for beneficiaries to plan their affairs around the tax. Example: parent dies unexpectedly aged 50 and their daughter, who has just had a baby, has committed all their cash to extending their home so they have no disposable cash to pay the inheritance tax bill.
  • parents who die in unforeseen circumstances at a young age may not have had the opportunity to transfer assets pre-emptively to children who are still very young
  • while some taxes, like USC, are earmarked for specific services and we can measure how well the government provides those services, it is harder to state whether the government is efficient in their use of funds from inheritance tax