The Conservative policy group set up by David Cameron has recommended that the next Tory manifesto support the abolition of the death tax. The tax, officially known as the ‘inheritance tax’, places a crippling burden upon many individuals and families, and is rightly despised as one of the most unfair, unprincipled, and unpractical taxes currently pushed upon the people of this country.

That it’s taken so long for a major party to propose ridding us of this relic is astounding. Although the forebear of the tax dates back to the French Revolutionary Wars, the modern death tax was introduced in 1894. Back then, the government called it what it was: Death duty. It underwent some rebranding, under both Labour and Conservative governments (although the Tories, to their credit, slashed the rate).

There are many lists of criteria of what makes a supposedly ‘good’ tax. However, one criterion is so obvious that it is never even mentioned: no individual ought to be taxed due to his or her own loss. If a man loses his watch, he shouldn’t be ‘punished’ by receiving a bill from HMRC for his neighbours’ kids school fees. But that’s exactly what happens with death tax; if a man dies, he is made to pay for all the extravagances of other people. As if death weren’t enough of a deterrent to popping one’s clogs…

The death tax is the arch-statist devise, entrenching the socialist belief that the state has a right on everything, and that nothing is the realm of the individual. It ranks alongside expropriation - like the death tax, known under euphemism (as ‘compulsory purchase’ or ‘eminent domain’) - as one of the grossest abuses of state power, and therefore the grossest embarrassment to state authority.

Tax at the best of times is a bad thing. Even those most enamoured to it consider it a ‘necessary evil’ (although how ‘necessary’ it is is open to debate), which is hardly the greatest compliment.  Death tax is the most unnecessary and most evil methods of extracting it.  The fact that the Conservative policy group is bold enough to propose its abolition it is a good sign. We can only wait to see if David Cameron is bold enough to finally make the death tax an ex-tax.