An age differentiated tax on bequests

This chapter presents four arguments supporting an age-differentiated tax on bequests, that is, a tax rate on bequests that is varying with the age of the deceased. The arguments are based on various ethical foundations and lead to an inheritance tax that can be either increasing or decreasing with the age of the deceased. The chapter argues that one of these arguments is more convincing than the three others: the argument supporting a bequest tax increasing with the age of the deceased. The chapter defends age-differentiated taxation on bequests by appealing to considerations of the compensation of unlucky prematurely dead persons in a world of imperfect information