On The Legitimacy Of The Inheritance Tax

An inheritance tax is a tax levied on a person who inherits money or property, or a tax on the estate (total value of the money and property), of a person who has died. It has a unique role on alleviating the unfair distribution of income, so it will be concerned by many scholars. With the rapid economic development, we may find that wealth is still concentrated at hands of minority. In this context, China's legal system to establish inheritance tax to narrow down wealth gap and to redistribute social wealth fairly and to prevent excessive concentration of wealth has become inescapable.Inheritance tax indeed has several functions both in economic and social aspects. However, does the Robin Hood way of inheritance tax have justification? We wonder whether the redistribution by countries through inheritance tax accords with the concept of distributive justice. Does inheritance harm the rights of a small number of wealthy individuals? In this paper I try to answer these questions through normative analysis. And this is most different from existing studies. This paper argues that the inheritance tax has an important value, and that value of social justice is the fundamental basis for inheritance tax.Overall, the paper tries to introduce the theory of inheritance tax and demonstrate the justification of inheritance tax. There are three chapters in this paper. The first chapter introduces the inheritance tax system in the world and its history of development. The second chapter analyzes the issue of justification of inheritance tax. The third chapter mainly discussed China's current social reality for the necessity and feasibility of the introduction of inheritance tax.