Sir, – I note that Dominic Coyle in his Q&A advice column (“Unmarried couples locked out of inheritance tax exemptions”, Your Money, August 20th), while answering a reader’s query on inheritance tax, availed of the opportunity to have something of a crack at me as chairperson of the Inheritance Tax Reform Campaign for advocating abolition of the tax or, as a minimum, its fundamental reform.
Having done so, it is noteworthy that he then went on to not only acknowledge the unfair impact of the tax on long-term cohabiting unmarried couples but to also advocate it be reformed!
He records that data from Census 2022 shows that out of the 1.28 million family units in Ireland, 177,000 are composed of couples with or without children who are not married and that the number is rising. Acknowledging that such couples should be entitled to the same full inheritance tax exemption as applies to married couples, he asserts it is well past time that the Government treated all families in an equal manner. On that we agree. If not abolished, the tax should be so reformed.
Earlier in his column, he wrongly implied I have talked “a lot of guff about the right to inherit” and criticises me for “ignoring the concentration of wealth already in Ireland”.
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I have never talked of anyone “having a right to inherit”, as individual inheritance rights are already prescribed by the Succession Act 1965 as amended.
Insofar as a concentration of wealth in Ireland is a cause of concern, it clearly is of no relevance to nor is it impacted by our ideologically inspired inheritance tax laws which have been in existence for almost 40 years. What I have talked of is the right of a fully tax compliant deceased to determine how to best dispose of lawfully acquired property and assets on death and to make provision for the security and wellbeing of family members, relations and friends without the State arbitrarily stealing from bereaved beneficiaries a portion of what they inherit.
I have stated that a portion of the assets of a deceased should not be expropriated by the State as are criminally acquired assets by the Criminal Assets Bureau. From feedback received, many agree.
In an earlier letter (July 25th), I detailed many of the anomalies and much of the unfairness inherent in our current inheritance tax laws, including the fact that the tax is a great deal more penal today than it was 16 years ago due to emergency financial measures, resulting from the banking crisis and the State’s financial collapse, not being amended or repealed.
As for any concentration of wealth, insofar as that is an issue, it is of no relevance to the State expropriating a third of any sum above €32,500 a deceased leaves to a grandchild, nephew, niece, brother or sister or of any sum above €16,250 left to a close friend or someone known to be financially distressed.
Dominic Coyle rightly quotes me as depicting inheritance tax as “a jealousy or resentment tax” that “attaches no value to responsible living, financial planning, hard work and generosity”. With that also many agree. That is why the tax has been abolished in a number of states and has never existed in many others. We should follow their lead. – Yours, etc,
ALAN SHATTER,
Dublin 16.