5. Our federal inheritance tax is far higher than in England or anywhere else. The maximum rate here on direct descendants is 27½ per cent. as against 20 per cent. in England. In addition we have State inheritance taxes which do not exist in England.
III
Much is being said about the plausible sounding contention that because a portion of the young manhood of the Nation has been conscripted, therefore money also must be conscripted. Why, that is the very thing the Government has been doing. It has conscripted a portion, a relatively small portion, of the men of the Nation. It has conscripted a portion, a large portion, of the incomes of the Nation. If it went too far in conscripting men, the country would be crippled. If it went too far in conscripting incomes and earnings, the country would likewise be crippled.
Those who would go further and conscript not only incomes but capital, I would ask to answer the riddle not only in what equitable and practicable manner they would do it,[1] but what the Nation would gain by it?
[1] It is true that a few years ago a capital levy was made in Germany, but the percentage of that levy was so small as to actually amount to no more than an additional income tax, and that at a time when the regular income tax in Germany was very moderate as measured by the present standards of income taxation.
Only a trifling fraction of a man's property is held in cash. If they conscript a certain percentage of his possessions in stocks and bonds, what would the Government do with them?
Keep them? That would not answer its purpose, because the Government wants cash, not securities.
Sell them? Who is to buy them when everyone's funds are depleted?
If they conscript a certain percentage of a man's real estate or mine or farm or factory, how is that to be expressed and converted into cash?
Are conscripted assets to be used as a basis for the issue of Federal Reserve Bank Notes? That would mean gross inflation with all its attendant evils, dangers and deceptions.