In his latest offering on his Constitutionally Speaking blog, Pierre de Vos has proposed SA should do away with the transfer of 'intergenerational wealth' via inheritance or heavily tax inheritance as a form of redistribution of wealth.

De Vos argues inheritance was a method white SA was able to retain the wealth accumulated over generations of colonial and apartheid rule.

News24 says it asked De Vos how this would work in practice and whether there was any political will to implement either option.

‘You know I am not an expert, so I avoided speaking about the practicality. For me, the important thing is that people should not unduly benefit because their parents have money. You can always make exceptions as I said in the piece: one must make sure that orphaned children are looked after, spouses, and so on. One can have a progressive sort of tax so the smaller your estate, the less tax you pay. I don't know, I am not an expert in tax, but it is the concept that I am supporting.’

He added: ‘I think the idea is about questioning the idea of inheritance is something that should go beyond SA. There are practical issues if you only do it in one country such as emigration. But, I think there should be a movement across the globe to mitigate the effects of unbridled capitalism and this would be one of them.’

On how his suggestions might infringe on rights to property in the Constitution, De Vos said: ‘I think it would be easier to introduce the tax because there's already a 20% inheritance tax on all inheritance over a certain amount in SA. So there's already a tax on that. To completely abolish it and for the state just to take your property is probably going to be difficult to justify in terms of our Constitution. Obviously, it would require a complete overhaul of the current law of succession where the assumption is that you have absolute power to decide what happens to your property after you die. That is the problem, it's the problem with all of these things: those of us who have money tend to protect our own interests.’

He added, according to News24: 'Those are not only white people. So, getting these kinds of ideas through is difficult because in other countries like in the US and UK, for example, they've imposed in certain times of history certain types of inheritance tax, and it's always extremely unpopular even with people who will never have to pay any tax in terms of this system, because people always think, wrongly, that they're going to die with much more money than they actually do.'

Full News24 report

Full Constitutionally Speaking article