Passing on Wealth or Neglecting your neighbour? A new approach to inheritance tax
By Timothy Green
“The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.”
Introduction
In Eden, man chose his greed for the forbidden fruit over his obedience to God. And in response to the pride and greed of humanity, God gave us death: “For dust you are, and to dust you will return.” [1]
Death serves as a reminder of the fundamental fragility and fleetingness of life, and also of the ultimate sameness of humanity. The bones of the billionaire and the beggar, buried side by side, cannot be distinguished from one another. And while many try not to think about what happens at the end of life, and the global elites do all they can to avoid the chains of death — from Russian President Putin [2] to tech billionaire Bryan Johnson [3] — death remains something that inevitably strikes us all: it is the final equaliser.
And so it is perhaps no coincidence that it is only once we are reminded of our ultimate equality — at the point of our death — that the state steps in and takes its most significant action against wealth inequality: inheritance tax.
The importance of Inheritance
Arguments for a very high rate of inheritance tax can be traced back to classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, who argued that this was one of the most moral modes of taxation, claiming that “it is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation” [4] and this thinking is still present in contemporary political discourse. For instance, journalist Lewis Goodall recently wrote in an article on the topic saying: “You should have the right to work and keep more of your own money, but you do not have a right to inherit wealth you did nothing to earn.” [5]
This thinking, though, contrasts a biblical attitude to the ownership of wealth. Psalm 24:1 teaches that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it”, and Genesis 2:15 suggests that rather than owning the world and what is on it, we are given it by our Creator to steward. Furthermore, the idea that we deserve the wealth we acquire in our lives is called into question when the Israelites come to the promised land, whereGod tells them to “understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.” [6]
Rather than thinking that somehow we have earned and deserve our wealth, Deuteronomy 8:17–18 tells the Israelites “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth”. Instead of having a very rigid sense of ourselves as having a right to wealth because we have earned it, we should be thinking of how we can best steward the wealth that God has given us the ability to earn. So then to apply this thinking to inheritance tax, the question we should be asking is how we can encourage people to best use the wealth that God has given them to steward.
The Bible suggests that using our money to provide for our family is a good thing that ought to be encouraged. In 1 Timothy 5:8, Paul writes that “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever”. And if there is any doubt in your mind regarding whether that remains the case after your death, Proverbs 13:22 says that “A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children”.
Inheritance also provides significant benefits to the wider economy. Consider someone wealthy diagnosed with a terminal illness. If they know that the government will take a big chunk of their money once they die, they might spend huge amounts of money on expensive holidays, cars, caviar and the like. Conversely, if there were a low inheritance tax and this person wanted to pass on the wealth to their children, the money would be saved or invested, which has significantly better long-term outcomes for the economy as a whole. [7]
Inheritance is, therefore, a social good that the Bible encourages, but also one that has wider economic benefits, and it is an important way we can honour God with the resources he gives us to steward.
The need for an inheritance tax
With all good things, there can come a point where there is too much of it. Consuming water is good, but too much and you drown; a little paracetamol is good, but too much can be fatal; devoting some of your wealth to leaving an inheritance is good; living a life devoted entirely to leaving as much money as possible to one’s children fails to live out biblical commands to assist gospel ministry and love the poor and needy around us. [8]
More and more families in our society are failing to meaningfully contribute to those around them and instead are hoarding wealth for themselves intergenerationally. The richest 50 families in the UK together now own more wealth than the poorest 50% of the country combined. [9] With the failure of people freely choosing to give away their money in significant amounts, and there being no need to provide figures in the hundreds of millions to one’s offspring, the state should step in to redistribute much of this wealth with inheritance tax, doing the good that these people should have done when they were alive.
Not only does this redistribution begin to right the wrong of someone’s hoarding, it has other positive effects, encouraging people to give more away to those around them in society while they are alive. With the knowledge that that their children would not otherwise receive the money, people will be nudged towards choosing to give away more to others outside their immediate family, leading to a more relational society.
Given who this blog is written for, I need hardly to mention Israel’s jubilee laws, where once every fifty years, land was returned to the families who owned it, and people were released from their debts and indentured servitude. [10] Among many other things, this served as regular protection against the entrenchment of significant familial inequalities that could otherwise have built up over time. Inheritance tax is a good way of achieving greater levels of cross-generational and cross-familial equality, and importantly it is a politically feasible way of achieving this goal within today’s viable policy options.
The problem with current thinking
At the heart of the problem with inheritance tax today is the view within the Treasury and political class that the main function of inheritance tax is as a source of revenue generation, as opposed to a means of cultivating a social good. Our political discourse on the matter, like so many others, phrases the issue as “asking the rich to pay a little more”, as opposed to consideration being given to the relational and moral benefits of encouraging people to leave inheritance in a responsible manner.
This attitude towards the purpose of inheritance tax has led to a number of other issues, in contemporary discourse most notably the proposed changes to inheritance tax on farms and businesses brought forward by the Government in 2025, where tax reliefs that had long recognised the social, agricultural and economic value of family-run farms and businesses were curtailed in order to raise additional revenue.Similarly, the current system can force families to sell the homes they grew up in in order to meet inheritance tax liabilities, particularly where wealth is held in illiquid assets such as property.
At the same time, the tax contains gaping loopholes that allow those with greater access to financial planning to shield significant portions of their wealth. The result is a system that is both economically distortive and morally inconsistent: it disrupts long-term patterns of family stewardship, such as maintaining a home or farm across generations, while failing effectively to target the kinds of excessive wealth accumulation it is intended to address.
A policy solution
I would say that there are two main aims that should be at play in the policy-maker’s mind when we think about inheritance taxes. First, encouraging responsible saving for one’s family, and second, discouraging the hoarding of familial wealth at the expense of a more relational society.
The government encourages good and responsible financial behaviour by topping up lifetime ISAs for people saving to buy their first homes or for their pensions, and similarly in the form of Gift Aid for charitable giving, both by 25%. In my view, saving money for your family is a moral behaviour that creates positive externalities, which should be encouraged by the government in similar fashion. Perhaps this might take the form of a negative inheritance tax, meaning that rather than taking away from people’s estate, the government supplements 25% to whatever you have saved for your family.
When, though, the level of giving exceeds what might be considered reasonable for your family (a question worthy of another article), the pressing need for wealth redistribution kicks in. At higher sums, there should be a very high rate of inheritance tax, preventing excessive familial entrenchment of wealth in the spirit of the jubilee laws. There should be clear guardrails to protect certain intergenerational assets — particularly family farms and businesses and primary residences that have been held within a family over a significant period — recognising their social and economic value and the role they play in long-term stewardship. More attention should also be paid to the means with which the super-rich avoid paying these taxes, such as through tax havens and the use of trusts.
As well as this in itself reducing inequality, the combination of negative inheritance tax on smaller estates with positive and high inheritance tax on larger estates would put people in a position to think significantly more relationally and charitably in their financial decision-making. Ultimately, I think this combination of inheritance tax policies would encourage people to love their neighbour both within and outside of their family far more than they currently do, in a way that is politically plausible in modern Britain.
Reference
[1] Genesis 3:19
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/03/asia/xi-putin-chat-immortality-longevity-intl
[3] https://www.ft.com/content/eaa9498b-2ab2-4905-a313-44d3f9ee9d08
[4] John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), Book V, Chapter II
[5] https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/lewis-goodall-100-inheritance-tax-5HjdBK7_2/
[6] Deuteronomy 9:6
[8] 1 John 3:17
[9] https://equalitytrust.org.uk/evidence-base/billionaire-britain-2025/
[10] Leviticus 25
