Britain’s Conservative Party may be moving against Inheritance Tax, largely because the 40% tax now affects many home-owners. The threshold of £263,000 has risen by only 32% since Labour took office, whereas house prices have risen 138%. Only Gerard’s Cross had an average house price above the threshold in 1997; now 86 towns and cities do, including London.

The tax, and its predecessor Death Duties, were conceived as a tax on "the rich," but now affect people on relatively modest means who happen to live in expensive areas. The tax seemed to owe more to envy than to revenue, since it has always generated so many economic distortions and tax-avoiding behaviour that its yield has probably always been negative. It breaks up businesses and capital pools, and causes assets to be liquidated only to pay it.

Some feel that inherited wealth, being "unearned" is somehow unjustified, and that it gives some an "unfair" start in life, which presumably takes place in an otherwise "fair" universe. Against this can be set the natural desire of parents to make provision for their children, and the gains to society if they create wealth to do so.

There is also the point that this represents wealth on which tax has already been paid. You earn it, pay taxes as you do so, and are then taxed again on what you have left at the end. And finally the house, which represents the larger part of what most people leave, is unrealized capital wealth which is not the best kind of tax. It looks like a death knell for the death tax.