Einde inhoudsopgave
Taxation of cross-border inheritances and donations (FM nr. 165) 2021/2.4.12
2.4.12 Penalty for the deceased’s tax evasion (the back-taxes theory)
Dr. V. Dafnomilis Adv. LL.M., datum 01-02-2021
- Datum
01-02-2021
- Auteur
Dr. V. Dafnomilis Adv. LL.M.
- JCDI
JCDI:ADS263244:1
- Vakgebied(en)
Internationaal belastingrecht / Voorkoming van dubbele belasting
Schenk- en erfbelasting / Algemeen
Voetnoten
Voetnoten
Laura and Noël Cunningham note in that regard that “[a]nother argument made by transfer tax proponents is that the taxes serve to backstop the income tax in two ways. First, they tax amounts that escape income taxation, and second, they add an additional degree of progressivity to a federal tax system that has become increasingly less progressive over the years.” See Laura Cunningham and Noël Cunningham, “The logic of the transfer taxes” (St. Paul: West Academic Publishing, 2018), 4.
Max West, “The Theory of the Inheritance Tax,” Political Science Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1893): 433.
States may view a death tax as a penalty for any tax evasion that the deceased may have indulged in during his life.1 According to Gutman and West, graduation according to kinship cannot be justified from this point of view, because the tax is regarded as being paid by the deceased and not by the beneficiaries. Furthermore, considered solely with reference to justice between individuals, the back-taxes theory is not very satisfactory, because the inheritance tax bears no necessary relation to the amount of taxes evaded in individual cases unless there is a tax which is so universally and uniformly evaded as to be practically a dead letter.2
I do not consider this justification a primary one as it takes for granted that the deceased was involved in tax evasion during his lifetime, which might not often be the case.