Two straight Canadian men to marry each other

[andrewducker]

There's an article here about two straight men who have noticed that there's a significant tax break for married couples - and are planning to take advantage of it.

Which, I think, just goes to show, that if you allow people to do things for one reason, they'll do it for their own reasons too.  Or as William Gibson once said "The Street finds its own uses for things."

How long, one wonders, until marriage is broken down, and you get to form your own contract using a CC-style choose-your-own-license?

I would like {Insert Name Here} to (a)inherit all my worldly goods (b)have power of attorney (c)love, honour and obey me (delete as applicable)

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Well, I've heard some arguments to let siblings 'marry' each other - in the sense of, if you and your spinster sister live together for thirty years, why can't one of you inherit everything from the other (including pensions and the like)?

[andrewducker]

And, indeed, if the third Earl of Winchester wishes to marry his son, so that no inheritance tax is paid, who are we to come between them?

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Why not let him marry BOTH of his sons, even?

See? You let the gays marry and it's THE END OF CIVILIZATION!

[andrewducker]

I hear next they're going to let cats and dogs marry each other.

I, for one, welcome our new cog overlords.

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Given what happened when my cat met the dog next door last night, I think it will be a while before any cogs appear.

[paddie-gal.livejournal.com]

Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

To me, that just demonstrates the utter ridiculousness of the inheritance tax system.

[andrewducker]

Too easy to get round, or shouldn't exist in the first place?

I need specifics of your point of view before I can violently disagree with you. :->

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

My view is that while I can understand the rationale for its introduction, it seems a completely arbitrary form of taxation at the moment.

If you have sufficient liquidity, you can use this to try to avoid it and buy the best advice on how to get round it, however those who are most penalised are:
- those whose wealth cannot readily be made liquid
- those just on the boundary
- those who suffer deaths in quick succession!

The latter is one I have a particular problem with.

It can act as a disincentive to save / retain savings depending on your exepectations (eg. you might start getting rid of funds at 75, but live until you're 90).

There is an argument that the landed classes should be taxed in this way as a means of redistribution, but in reality large estates end up held by bodies such as the National Trust; which is all very well, but doesn't count as 'redistribution' in my book. In addition, if we continue to penalise those who profit from their ancestors misdeeds (assuming that is how the profit was made), at what point in history do we stop?

[andrewducker]

We don't stop. The point isn't punishment. The point is that there are people who are rich because they were lucky enough to be born to the right family, and people who are poor because they were unlucky enough not to be. And equalising that at a particular point is easy - because the children didn't do anything to deserve it, and aren't (mostly) depending on it for their basic lifestyle.

And yes, there are boundary conditions that need to be dealt with. And the amount you get tax free ought to be flexible, and probably based on a formula based around (Average House Price + Average Yearly Wage) & 1.5 (or other factor) to stop the average person being caught up in it.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

It's punishment if it's not worked out fairly, which it currently isn't. Trying to decide what's an acceptable level of inheritance and what isn't is incredibly complicated: I don't think that a fair inheritance tax is feasible.

The current economic system makes it important to provide incentive to create wealth and use it within the UK. The tax system actually provides a disincentive, meanwhile large multinationals are essentially immortal (for tax purposes). Private institutions are almost the new landed gentry, but with greater flexibility and fewer concrete constraints - inheritance tax doesn't address this.

[andrewducker]

Inheritance tax isn't aimed at corporations - although it will affect shares and suchlike, obviously.

And inheritance tax isn't going to affect incentives to create wealth - it tends to hit people several years after they cease to create it any more...

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Inheritance tax isn't aimed at corporations

That's precisely my point. A tax aimed at ensuring wealth isn't concentrated in the hands of the few doesn't work so well when the few are multinational corporations who don't pay it.

And inheritance tax isn't going to affect incentives to create wealth
It does affect incentive to keep wealth within the UK, which is the point I was making. People transfer their income abroad and often as they get older try to build that income abroad too - partly for tax reasons.

[andrewducker]

Moving your money abroad won't stop you paying inheritance tax on it - if your will is executed in the UK (or you are legally domiciled here) it'll still get hit by UK inheritance tax.

And there are still many, many people worth vastly more than the average person, who do pay it. There are other taxes aimed at corporations. Corporation tax, and employers NI for two.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I'd personally be in favor of something like that, too. Being able to define who your "family" is for purposes of hospital visits and making decisions when unconscious and the like seems to make a lot of sense to me. It doesn't make any sense that a person's abusive parents/separated-spouse/whatever can visit in a hospital, but best friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever can't.

[fire-sermon.livejournal.com]

The boyfriend of someone I work with registered at his local gym as a couple with one of his (straight male) mates because they got a discount...

[diotina.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a discussion that was on my journal recently re: the terms of the ceremony themselves and how legally defensible they are. It seems to me that if the words of the ceremony are not legally binding, then it doesn't have any contractual legitimacy anyway, which confuses me a bit...which is why I tend to look at it as an entirely social/personal thing rather than a legal thing, but admittedly, the lines are very blurred, which allows these two to do this in the first place!

[andrewducker]

Well, the wording of the marriage ceremony itself is meaningless. The only important bit is signing a piece of paper saying that you're married. Once you've done that (and got it witnessed) it's the laws themselves that matter...

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It seems likely that in civilized nations (ie the US will either not go this way or will take several additional decades to do so) marriage will either be replaced by such a contract or will become such a contract. The entire idea of marriage as a special set of rights limited to only specific types of relationships seems fairly antithetical to free and diverse societies. When birth control and easy divorce became basic civil rights and both men and women working outside the home became fully accepted, traditional marriage was essentially doomed. We are now seeing the results and I am very pleased. OTOH, in the US, you also predictably have a reactionary backlash in the form of idiocies like "covenant marriage"</a.

[andrewducker]

You always have reactionaries - I usually look on them as a good sign that society is moving in the right direction.

And yes, I'd hope you're right - things will hopefully move towards a much more fluid society. The slow bit is actually likely to be those companies that offer "Health benefits for you and your spouse" and the like.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Health benefits are another reason I expect marriage to die/alter faster outside of the US. In the US or any other nation where citizens must take care of their own health costs, insurance coverage becomes very tricky for poly-families and suchlike. OTOH, this is a complete non-issue in any nation where the government provides health insurance.