This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family farms.
And it exists in part because there are so many legitimate cases for doing it, even as a wealthy person: pretend you're a relatively successful businessman whose company has appreciated to $50mm. In this world, you can't just leave your gains unrealized and borrow against them. So you can
- Try to find somebody to sell to, which is a sketchy move. Of course, as your company continues to appreciate, you will be forced to continue reducing your ownership stake. Over time, this will make keeping a family business in the family largely impossible.
- Try to find money to pay taxes. This means less money for R&D, for expansion, for your employees.
- Just dump the whole business to private equity and move on.
These all suck, and the government generally collects money on assets as they move not assets at rest. I see no way to resolve it that isn't suckier than the status quo and so am left with the conclusion that people who agitate for such changes are more resentful of the rich than they are worried about the justice or lack thereof of tax avoidance.
