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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

No, but be careful where you draw the line. In particular, don't draw it between "real estate" and "financial assets". Real estate can easily be a financial asset. Instead, the trick is to draw it between "family farm" and "billionaire who bought 100,000 acres of prime farmland".

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Seems straight forward enough, put a value cap on it. $10 million? 20 million? Is anyone going to feel bad for the poor soul who can't pay the tax bill on a free 20 million dollar home?

We have a limit on gifts and according to this is 13 million. Just make it that.

What would be the downside here other than extremely wealthy having to pay some taxes upon death?

Make inheritance count toward the gift limit. Have the full $13M limit left on your gifting exemptions? You pass down $13M in inheritance tax free.

That is literally already how it works.

It's simple really, many people don't see it as a "free home".

It's your home. It's no more free or unfree, earned or unearned than anything else.

The home that I grew up in is.. hell, I'd consider it to be "mine" and my siblings more than almost anything else I have.

If that home is over 10, 13 or 20m dollars... you can pay tax on it. If you have siblings, I assume it would be divided between you, so multiply value by siblings.

If you got a home worth that much, you can pay some taxes on it.

https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/more-than-1-500-homes...

1,500 homes sold for over 10m in a year. We're talking about the richest of the rich. That's exactly who should be paying some taxes. The people bitching about losing 'their' home this way... are either a) delusional or b) looking for a way to protect their incredible wealth.

Is your family home worth more than 10 or 20m dollars?

I can pay taxes on one dollar. It's the principle.

In my country our threshold is significantly lower by the way - it's around a million, so bog standard houses get hit by it.

I think that inheritance taxes are wholly equivalent to wealth taxes, e.g. "you have a thing, I like that thing, give me that thing", and therefore morally wrong.

I could agree with them on the basis that the money were minimal and solely used for security e.g. police and military, it's an insurance policy against theft, the Government has a monopoly on force and that's better than warlords.

It's not used that way though, so I reject the premise.

No house costing a million is just a bog standard house. It's a mansion; if not in size then at least in value.

The greatest privilege I suppose I have is that I am able to consider a bog standard three bedroomed terraced family house as being normal regardless of how much bad Governmental policy has managed to inflate the market value.

In Hawaii my house is 870k for a three bedroom built in the 50s on a medium plot. I still agree with your argument other than that.

There are different things that make house/apartment above normal. One is of course size and age. But other things like location have big influence as well (check apartments in central Manhattan).

Instead of trying to analyze hundreds of different what-makes-house-above-bare-minimum aspects we can simply use the price as a good indicator of the underlying value.

And 1mil house is definitely not bare minimum. It is clearly above average.

I'll hand it to you that a $1mm home is definitely valuable, however in my case, living on an island, it's not like I can trade it for anything much less valuable, so it's pretty much non-fungible if you assume I will move from a home I own to another home I own nearby. Sure, if I sell here and move to North Dakota I'll be a wealthy individual there, but I am not going to be doing that. Also, if I sold this and rented, I would have a payment that's 50-65% of what I have in this mortgage, but then even if I have a large equity gain from selling I still have to assume I'll use that money over time to rent, so I'm even again. Homes here are more of an impediment to financial success than in most places. People move away from Hawaii, where they grew up, because it's so unaffordable for normal folks. I am lucky that I am well-employed when I have a job (not right now) and can afford to pay this huge payment in order to secure my children's future housing. They will certainly be well-off with a paid-off home here, but that's rarer these days with a lot more people with new families renting here. I'm not really sure what your point is about the home value in this situation. On the mainland it's a little different because you can move 60 minutes away from most places and find cheaper housing, even if it isn't your favorite place. Here on the islands, you can't just move to a cheaper place, everything is expensive here unless you want to move into a literal shack.

> I'm not really sure what your point is about the home value in this situation.

Everything started with another account saying "In my country our threshold [for inheritance tax] is significantly lower by the way - it's around a million, so bog standard houses get hit by it."

So my point is that 1mil house is not a "bog standard house", whether we look globally or in the USA-only.

Sure, there are some spots in the world in which the average price of the house is going to be higher. But that's irrelevant. It only means that the location is what making that house exceptional.

I understand your practical considerations/explanations about living in an extremely costly place where everything (housing, food, etc) is expensive. But the decision to stay there is on you. "if I sell here and move to North Dakota I'll be a wealthy individual there, but I am not going to be doing that" - is the crux of the issue.

Basically, you don't believe in government except to protect you from others who might take, while you have would have to ability to take advantage of others freely. No basic humans should be satisified by the government.

That's exactly what the ultra wealthy seem to generally believe too. Sorry that many of us reject your premise that you should be freely protected to screw over everyone else and think that's a moral decision (it's not, but I won't waste my time).

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