Inheritance Tax And The Legislative Research

Along with the development of reform and open-door policy in our country, rate of the economic growth and the living level of our people improved greatly. However, the gap between rich and poor in our country is also gradually enlarging at the same time. The widening of the rich-poor gap would affect social stability, and the economic problems would finally evolve to social problems. Under the circumstances, how to adopt effective means to reduce the gap between rich and poor has certain theoretical and practical significance. Many countries mainly took these methods, such as stimulating rich people to spend and invest more, encouraging donations, and collecting inheritance tax, to solve this problem. The author would like to discuss the problem of reducing the gap between rich and poor from levying the inheritance tax point of view, namely to take back large amount of wealth, accumulated by the rich people before their death, in taxation form to the nation after their death.Starting from the investigation of the origin and development of the inheritance tax, the necessity and feasibility of levying inheritance tax will be thoroughly analyzed in this article. Furthermore, the enlightenment brought by overseas inheritance tax system, the difficulty of levying inheritance tax we will face currently, and the countermeasure we can take will be addressed. The inheritance tax legislation concept for our country will be proposed based on the discussions above, mainly focused on the contents of the legal principles, such as the selection of the tax system patterns, taxpayers, taxation object, and the tax rate. Completion of necessary measures for levying inheritance tax will also be discussed. The following five parts are addressed in this article:The introduction partial mainly elaborated the function of inheritance tax and the main practical significance of our country's inheritance tax. That had expounded the inheritance tax is an important method that will alleviate the gap between rich and poor, encourage donation, realize fair society.The first part is the inspections on basic issues on the inheritance tax, which discussed the concept of the inheritance tax, main theoretical schools, and its historical evolution. Firstly, the concept of the inheritance tax was put forward, which clarifying that the inheritance tax is a kind of property taxation on the transference of the owner's property to other people after his/her death. Its object of taxation is inheritance. Secondly, five theoretical schools of western scholars about the inheritance taxation were summarized, and four principles on levying inheritance tax were addressed based on them. Thirdly, the origin and development of the overseas inheritance tax system and the evolution of the inheritance tax system in our country were introduced.Inheritance tax has a long history, and the earliest inheritance tax was brought forward in ancient Egypt and the fourth dynasty in about 26 century BC. The modern inheritance tax origins in Holland in 1598, and the contemporary inheritance tax were levied in more than 100 countries and areas. The development of inheritance tax assumes two tendencies. On one hand, some countries where the gap between rich and poor enlarges gradually are actively studying on the inheritance tax and are prepared to take action; On the other hand, some of the developed countries are beginning to abolish the inheritance tax gradually. In the middle of the 20^th century, inheritance tax was once levied in our country for a short time, but was suspended ever since. After the foundation of the new China, the central government set up 14 taxation categories including the inheritance tax, but its levying did not take effect due to many reasons including the level of economic development. With the reform and open-door policy advanced in our country, the inheritance tax is brought into the scope of the research on our tax law once more.The second part is the comparative law study on the inheritance tax, taking examples of the United States, Germany and Italy. Firstly, three taxation systems of inheritance tax were introduced, namely total inheritance tax system, separate inheritance tax system and mixed inheritance tax system, and the advantages and disadvantages of them were analyzed. Secondly, three representative countries of taxation systems, the United States, Germany and Italy, were introduced individually for the key elements of taxation in detail. Thirdly, on the basis of the analysis and comparison, five inspirations of levying inheritance tax in our country we got from foreign inheritance tax systems are as follows: 1.The levying of inheritance tax should be compatible with situation of the country. It is undesirable to haste to and copy the methods from other countries aimlessly or to exaggerate the difficulties we are facing too much and miss the timing of legislation.2.The role of inheritance tax has changed, with its economic function of increasing revenues weakening, and the social function of adjusting the gap between rich and poor to be more important.3.A simple tax system design of the inheritance tax is better than a complicated one, which would decrease the resistance of levying and lower the taxation cost.4.There should be complete measures for levying the inheritance tax, which would avoid its inefficiency. These measures include property registration system, property assessment system, thorough savings account system with real names, and property controlling system, and so on.5.The core of levying the inheritance tax is the determination of the threshold and the tax rates. The former defines who the taxpayers are, and the latter determines the ratios of tax collections. The two main points basically elucidate who pay the tax and how much tax should be paid, which is not only the main concerns for the regular people, but also undoubtedly the key to success of the system design.The third part discusses the value analysis of levying the inheritance tax in our country. Firstly, an academic debate was stimulated for levying inheritance tax, and on the basis of summing up the agreeable and disagreeable views from experts and scholars, the author brings forward her own point of view. She thinks that levying inheritance tax will not impair the economic development, especially private economy, which leads to reduced investment and capital outflow. We need not doubt on our ability of levying and managing the inheritance tax, and the profit of the tax. Secondly, the necessity of introducing inheritance tax was discussed from its practical needs and significance. Thirdly, the feasibility of the inheritance tax was discussed from three aspects, the economic situation, the social environment, and the legal conditions.The fourth part talked about the difficulties and countermeasures of levying inheritance tax in our country. By following the procedures of summing up the practical problems and giving the countermeasures after analyzing the problems, four aspects were discussed, and means of solving them were brought forward individually. These four difficulties are the lack of agreeable attitude toward the inheritance tax, the problems on assessment of the property values, the lack of registration system for personal properties, and the imperfect fact of our personal income credit system.The fifth part discussed the design concept of inheritance tax legislation. Firstly, total inheritance tax system is suggested to be adopted in our country, the reasons for it were analyzed, and it is suggested that gift tax should be a supplement to the system. Secondly, nine key elements for the inheritance tax in our country were described in detail. The nine elements are the taxpayers, the taxation object, threshold for taxation, tax rate, exemption items, tax credit, assessment of the inheritance, and the category of the taxation. Thirdly, five measures are important for complete inheritance tax legislation, namely the system of death reports for citizens, personal income claim and registration of personal properties, assessment of personal properties, inheritance law, and notarization of personal properties.