inheritance tax
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 222 U.S. 525 - Fred Keeney v. Comptroller of the State of New York · 1912Most cited · 218 citing opinions
privilege rationale
inheritance taxes have been sustained on the ground that no one has the natural right to acquire property by will or descent, and if the state permits such acquisition, it may require the payment of a tax as a condition precedent to the right of using that privilege. ... There is no natural right to create artificial and technical estates with limitations over, nor has the remainderman any more right to succeed to the possession of property under such deeds than legatees and devisees under a will. The privilege of acquiring property by such an instrument is as much dependent upon the law as that of acquiring property by inheritance.
How the Supreme Court has restated “inheritance tax”
Each Supreme Court definition of “inheritance tax,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “inheritance tax”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “inheritance tax” — 399 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1906–1948
- ORIGINAL
The tax was defined in the Perkins Case to be 'not a tax upon the property itself, but upon its transmission by will or descent;' and in the Magoun Case, 'not one on property, but one on the succession.' In Knowlton v. Moore it was said that such taxes 'rest in their essence upon the principle that death is the generating source from which the particular taxing power takes its being, and that it is the power to transmit, or the transmission from the dead to the living, on which such taxes are more immediately rested.
defined
An inheritance or estate tax is not levied on the property of which an estate is composed. Rather it is imposed upon the shifting of economic benefits and the privilege of transmitting or receiving such benefits.