Izaak Tanna

Among the many moral and social evils perpetrated by successive governments in the last decades, the philosophy of unchecked taxation on the people, and unrestrained governmental spending, is among the worst – both ideologically as well as fiscally. Since the rise of the modern state, taxation has increasingly ceased to be viewed as the temporary necessity of government – where the fruits of the labour of the people are sacrificed for the greater good of the society – and instead become regarded as a moral instrument of authoritative governments by which society itself is to be reshaped. We see this most recently in acts such as the VAT on private schools, the Agricultural Property Relief Bill and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Indeed, in few areas is this more visible than in the question of inheritance tax. Defenders of a ‘death tax’ portray it as a mechanism of fairness, equality, and social redistribution. Yet from the perspective of classical Christian theology, and particularly Catholic social thought, inheritance tax represents something far more serious, namely, an intrusion of the state into the natural and divine order of human society. Indeed, it could be argued that inheritance tax is not simply economically unwise, but morally disordered, because it attacks the very institution through which human civilisation perpetuates itself. The family.

The Christian understanding of society begins not with the state, but with the family. In Genesis, God blesses Adam and Eve, commanding them to ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’ The command is not merely biological, but societal and civilisational. Man is commanded to cultivate, preserve, order, and hand down Creation. The family therefore becomes the first society, prior even to political society and any social contract. This is a profoundly traditional and immutable understanding of the world. Increasingly, modern society views the individual as existing chiefly in relation to the state, whereas Christianity and traditional society understands the individual first through family, community, and nation. It is within this framework that inheritance must be understood.

Aristotle, whose political philosophy profoundly shaped Christian theology through St Thomas Aquinas, defended the principle of private property against collectivist theories in his Politics. He wrote that ‘property should be private, but the use of it common.’ Aristotle recognised that men care most for what belongs to them and to those nearest to them. The household, or oikos, formed the foundation of political order. Indeed, Aristotle understood that property was not merely economic, but moral; it cultivated responsibility, continuity, and social stability. The abolition or weakening of inheritance therefore undermines the very structure of society itself, since inheritance is simply the continuation of ownership through generations.

St Thomas Aquinas develops this Aristotelian understanding within the framework of Christian natural law. In the Summa Theologiae, he writes that ‘the possession of external things is natural to man.’ Aquinas defended private property not merely as lawful, but as beneficial, because it promotes order, peace, and diligence. What is often forgotten in modern political discussions is that property in the Thomistic sense is never entirely individualistic. Property exists within a chain of duties and obligations, chiefly towards one’s family. A father labours not solely for himself, but for his children and descendants. The desire to leave something behind for one’s offspring is therefore not an artificial capitalist instinct, but part of the natural law itself. The heresy of the modern age is to pervert this human instinct into working for the state, rather than the human family. 

To place a punitive tax upon inheritance is therefore to interrupt this natural continuity between generations. It is effectively to say that property never truly belongs to the family, but belongs ultimately to the state, which merely permits temporary stewardship during life. Such an idea would have been incomprehensible to most of Christian civilisation. Indeed, Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum writes that ‘the family… is a society very small, one indeed, but none the less a true society.’ He continues further that ‘the right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man.’ The ancient British aristocratic order enshrined this so well. The nobleman who inherited his land and money was not the owner of these possessions. He was simply the steward and caretaker, to do good in his generation in order to preserve it for the next. The implications of this are profound. If property derives from nature, and nature itself from God, then the state cannot claim absolute authority over property without also claiming authority over the natural order itself.

Modern taxation already reaches into almost every sphere of life. People are taxed upon their labour through income tax, upon consumption through VAT, upon savings, property, fuel, transactions, and enterprise. Yet inheritance tax differs fundamentally from ordinary taxation because it falls not upon economic activity, but upon the transmission of family continuity itself. It taxes death. More precisely, it taxes the final act of parental provision. The family home, accumulated through decades of labour, sacrifice, prudence, and duty, becomes partially confiscated at the very moment it is handed to one’s children.

Defenders of inheritance tax often appeal to Christian concern for the poor. Yet this confuses charity with coercion. Christianity undoubtedly commands generosity. Aquinas states plainly that ‘almsgiving is an act of charity.’ But charity, in Christian theology, possesses moral worth precisely because it is voluntary and rooted in virtue. A state which forcibly redistributes wealth does not thereby create charity. Pope Benedict XVI observed in Deus Caritas Est that ‘the State which would provide everything… would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person needs: namely, loving personal concern.’ Catholic thought has therefore consistently distinguished between moral obligation and state compulsion.

Furthermore, one of the central principles of Catholic social teaching is subsidiarity. This is the idea that matters ought to be handled by the smallest competent authority possible. It starts with the family, and then extents into society and the state. The family precedes the state both chronologically and morally. The state exists to support the family, not replace it. Inheritance tax reverses this principle by transferring wealth and responsibility away from families upward toward centralised bureaucracy. It weakens intergenerational solidarity and replaces familial continuity with dependence upon state structures.

At a philosophical level, it could further be said that inheritance tax undermines one of the primary motivations for human labour itself. Men and women naturally desire to improve the condition of their children. This instinct transcends economics and politics. It is anthropological and civilisational. A labourer who works overtime to secure a home for his children, or a shopkeeper who builds a business to leave to his family, acts according to one of the deepest impulses of human nature, namely love. To penalise this instinct is to act against nature itself. Christianity has always recognised that ordered love begins with those nearest to us. Augustine’s conception of ordo amoris, the proper ordering of love, understood that duties begin within the household before extending outward into wider society.

This is not to deny that wealth carries responsibilities. Catholic theology has never defended greed, avarice, or indifference to the poor. Nor does it reject taxation itself. The state possesses legitimate authority to raise revenue for the common good. Yet there remains a distinction between legitimate taxation and the absorption of familial inheritance into the machinery of the state. Equality itself is not the highest Christian virtue. Indeed, Christianity has never taught absolute material equality, but rather moral responsibility, duty, and justice.

Ultimately, inheritance is not fundamentally about wealth, but continuity. It concerns memory, sacrifice, duty, and love between generations. A society which ceases to value inheritance gradually ceases to value inheritance in the broader sense. Inherited culture, inherited faith, inherited nationhood, inherited obligation. Inheritance tax therefore reflects a deeper philosophical shift within modernity, the replacement of the family by the state as the primary unit of society. As the new Labour government starts to debate a ‘death tax’ on estates, it should also consider the far reaching philosophical and civilisational implications of doing so. That being said, the modern Labour Party has long ceased to be one concerned with tradition, nationhood, culture, obligation or of course Christian civilisation.

Christian civilisation understands something different. It understands that a father planting trees whose shade he would never sit beneath is not selfishness, but virtue. To labour so that one’s children may prosper is among the most natural and noble impulses given to man by God. A state which heavily taxes inheritance risks not merely economic oversight, but moral disorder, because it places itself between parent and child, between labour and legacy, and ultimately between the family and the natural order established by God Himself.