Why inheritance is the dirty secret of the middle classes – harder to talk about than sex

Weird how you come up with **** like this despite knowing absolutely nothing about the person.

That’s not what you posted though, and you have no insight into how/how hard they worked. You are just making up a narrative to suit your viewpoint.

There were still engineering apprenticeships 80 years ago. It wouldn't have been exclusive to universities till around 1960s onwards.

I have absolutely zero inheritance to get. Never knew my father and my mother made a mess of her life and is only one of her siblings not to own a house or any other assets.

I am conflicted to a certain degree on inheritance. On one hand there is the super wealthy who have so much that their kids/grandchildren actually don’t have to work a day in their lives and never contribute to society. I don’t think we have many of this category in Ireland. However, in places like US those people are untouchable and live in an alternative world to everyone else and everything is handed to them.

In general in Ireland I would think most people in Ireland who receive an inheritance will need to continue working to maintain their lifestyle. They might be able to change their car or renovate their house, but their lifestyle doesn’t seem to drastically change. The deceased person would of paid their taxes etc and the receiver would usually be working and contributing that way.

Life isn’t fair. Realistically inheritance has always existed, but in more recent decades we didn’t think about it because it was possible to improve your lot in life. All you had to do was work hard. Now we live in a world where you can have a good education or skills and stable job and still find yourself going nowhere as your income is nearly all gone after you pay rent, bills, food. How did we end up in a situation where this could happen.

The lacuna in your above logic process illustrates why you are likely having difficulty in understanding basic concepts in general

You can try to rewrite history all you want. May I suggest that you talk to an elderly relative to get their opinion of who was considered well off and who wasn't well off when they were growing up, or even in their parents time?

When the vast majority were unskilled labourers, the people who were above that would indeed have been considered as well off

It's a bit silly to try to state that someone who was a trained engineer 80 years ago in Ireland would not have been considered as in a good position. Half the country were probably scraping by off semi-subsistence agriculture ffs. A good portion of the remainder were over digging roads in England

New data from the CSO:

No. People who provide for their dependants don't pay a penny in extra tax.

How much do you have to leave your child for them to receive €500,000?

This all comes down to whether you believe in high taxation or low taxation.

If I have kids I want them to get every penny. I don't want people I never even know who I probably don't even like and probably wouldn't be bothered with me getting it.

The extreme left think they are entitled to everyone's money. And you better believe the inheritance tax won't apply to them. All the leftists from Barrett etc are all millionaires.

What's with all this talk of taking money to just give it to others? How do people think healthcare, gardai, schools, colleges, infrastructure(electricity/water/refuse(not totally covered by charges)), democracy, footpaths, streetlights, green spaces, sports, the arts, environmental conservation, archaeology, libraries, the justice system.....is paid for? Do these things just magic out of thin air?

All that still needed paying for before any kind of inheritance tax was introduced.

I’m annoyed mainly because I inherited the family home in my mid 20s when I didn’t have the income (trainee accountant) to afford a mortgage to pay the inheritance tax. Due to living away from home for college I didn’t qualify for dwelling house relief even though I was living at home at the time. Properties in the area where I grew up are massively overpriced but how is that my fault? I had to sell. In any case, after legal/probate fees, repairs on the house pre-sale, auctioneers fees, paying inheritance tax and interest on the late payment of tax (took me two years to finalise the sale so I had to pay a steep interest bill) I was left with €300k.

€300k may seem like a lot of money, but it is still not enough to buy a modest home in the neighbourhood I called home. It took me another five years renting before I was able to buy an apartment fifty miles from where I grew up. This is utterly insane and should not happen.

I don’t object to inheritance tax in principle, but in practice it inflicts the trauma of bereavement and eviction due to property prices everyone agrees are inflated. Can we at least agree that this should not happen?

Well yes ..and no.

Obv they do want to make a lot of money ...but also ..wills can be tricky things and people even trickier...its best to make sure its legal and fair.

I’m sorry this happened, I’m sure it was difficult. It would seem sensible for there to be some ability to defer inheritance tax for a sensible period in situations like this. But that aside. From a purely financial point of view, I can’t see how the numbers stack up.

Assuming you paid €100k in fees etc. (seems steep). You inhertited 400k. €335 tax free. €21k tax bill. Even if we stretch it to 200k in fees. €54k tax bill. You’d surely get a loan to cover that given the huge net worth you had.

And from a pure affordability perspective, the repayments would be next to nothing compared to rent or whatever the alternative was?