Max Young's column argues that abolishing Inheritance Tax would reduce wealth inequality. Its argument is not a finding. In one passage it describes estates worth £2m to £7.5m as "the middle class" to claim the tax hits that group hardest, while its own figures show only around one in ten estates will pay the tax at all.
Opinion piece: read for false claims of fact and for fairness to the people it names, not for its opinions.
Uses figures that mislead
Serious
“Inheritance Tax hits the middle class the hardest too – HMRC data shows families with estates worth between £2m and £7.5m are hit with an IHT bill of more than 25 per cent”
Why this matters
The words "hits the middle class the hardest" attach the HMRC rate for estates worth £2m to £7.5m to the middle class, so the effective rate for multi-million-pound estates stands in for ordinary families.
The impression it gives
A reader comes away believing that typical middle-class families face an Inheritance Tax bill of more than a quarter of their estate.
The context
The column's own figures put these estates near the top of the distribution. It says only "more than 10 per cent of British estates will pay Inheritance Tax in three years", and even that is a rise. Estates of £2m and above are therefore among the wealthiest estates, not the middle class, and most families pay no Inheritance Tax at all.
How we know
Elsewhere in the article“more than 10 per cent of British estates will pay Inheritance Tax in three years”