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Originally Posted by Fuzz
No, not at all. I think the proportion of millennial and gen Xers getting big paydays is going to be a lot smaller than the rest of the voting population. Not all boomers are loaded, and with immigration over the years, while the dollar value being passed down is huge, I don't think it's anywhere near a majority of people who will be recipients.
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Those inheritances will mostly be from liquidated houses. The average home value in Ontario is $800k. In B.C, it’s almost a million. Lots and lots of millennials are doing to inherit half of a $700k to $1 million house. Taxes will be have to paid when the home values are liquidated, but paydays of $300k per survivor will be common. Millennial voters aren’t going to graciously accept that being cut down to $200k out of a sense of public duty. Not when many are already earmarking those expected windfalls to fund their own retirements, or help their kids get on the housing ladder.
And if you’re going to set the inheritance tax threshold higher - at say three million in assets - it’s not going to collect as much as you’d hope. It will be drawn from far fewer households, and people with assets will find ways to pass on the money while they’re living, like buying cars, homes, etc. outright for their kids and grandkids.
Inheritance taxes sound attractive in theory, but they’re typically ineffective in practice. There’s a reason governments everywhere rely mainly on income and sales taxes - they’re easy to collect, hard to avoid, and they’re drawn from a very large proportion of citizens.