What Libertarians (Should) Think About Inheritance Taxation

Twele, Marcel (2022). What Libertarians (Should) Think About Inheritance Taxation. Res publica, 29(1), pp. 89-110. Springer 10.1007/s11158-022-09562-3

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Recently, there has been an effort to make libertarianism compatible with a redistributive inheritance tax: When the tax is levied, the taxpayer in question is already dead and as such she cannot be a bearer of rights. The state is therefore allowed to redistribute the (value of) the estate according to some distributive principle. I consider (and finally dismiss) four successive arguments, each concluding that the state is allowed to use the estate for redistributive purposes. I show that neither of them is able to reconcile (right-) libertarianism with a redistributive inheritance tax. Instead of trying to square the circle, proponents of such a tax should meet the theoretical essentials of (right-) libertarianism head-on.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy > Practical Philosophy

UniBE Contributor:

Twele, Marcel

Subjects:

100 Philosophy
100 Philosophy > 170 Ethics
100 Philosophy > 190 Modern western philosophy

ISSN:

1572-8692

Publisher:

Springer

Language:

English

Submitter:

Marcel Twele

Date Deposited:

24 Oct 2022 16:27

Last Modified:

19 Feb 2023 02:13

Publisher DOI:

10.1007/s11158-022-09562-3

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/174032

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/174032

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