Grateful dead
WHO says you can't take it with you? John Major is offering tax relief to the dead. Until now, their part in British political life has been marginal — in Northern Ireland, their names somehow survive on electoral rolls and their votes are somehow cast, but they have not been thought to need incen- tives. Here comes a political operator who knows better. Reform of the death duty
(now euphemistically labelled inheritance tax) was the first kite he chose to drift across the sky in Labour's conference week. I can read his mind. He sees an older generation which has, more or less by accident, made money out of owning houses. He would like the next generation to invest that money in something produc- tive, by which he does not mean the Capital Duties Office. Besides, this tax is no great revenue-raiser, so it would not cost much to reform. All the same, he is tackling the capital duties from the wrong end. The tax on productive investment is capital gains tax, which falls squarely on the personal investor (all others can post- pone or avoid it) at the highest rate in its short history. I can see that a Tory in Burke's tradition would look at the death duty as a tax on continuity. If you believe that hereditary wealth and power serve to set up great families like great oaks, so that others have the lesser privilege of shelter- ing under their branches, then the death duty is the ivy. I, though, think — and indeed hope — that John Major is not that sort of Tory.
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