Talk:Transfer tax

Clean up!
Dear fellow editors. This article needs more work.

A prior editor was apparently under the misconception that the estate tax is somehow distinguished from the transfer tax. In the United States, at least, the Federal estate tax is a kind of transfer tax. The Federal gift tax is also a transfer tax. I believe the prior editor was using the term "transfer tax" in a slightly different sense.

The article still needs more work to clarify the various meanings of the term. I will try to get to it soon, but perhaps some fellow editors outside the USA can provide clarification on what the term "transfer tax" means in other jurisdictions. Yours, Famspear 21:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I have now added a bit more explanation on what I believe is the distinction between the two kinds of "transfer taxes." Famspear 23:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I have added a little be more but need to obviously add greater explination. I have authored a relevent article that i can modify and put in here but i wont have a chance until mid May. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.111.8.21 (talk • contribs)


 * Great - look forward to the addition (so long as such content is not copyrighted by you or the publisher). Thanks Morphh   (talk) 13:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Clarifying language
Dear editor Swlenz: This is the language with which I had the problem:


 * [ . . . ] where the court held that the estate tax was not taxing the property (if it did, it would not be constitutional because only the states, not the federal government had this right), but instead, it was a tax on the transfer of the property.

The above is incorrect. The Court did hold that the estate tax was an indirect tax. (And of course, indirect taxes are not required to be apportioned.) However, there is no rule of law that says only the states, not the federal government, have the right to tax the property itself.

Whether in 1789 or in 2007, the Congress has the power to impose a tax on property itself -- that is, a tax on property by reason of ownership. Indeed, only a few kinds of taxes are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, such as taxes on exports and taxes as a requirement of voting.

The restriction on a property tax imposed by reason of ownership -- as a direct tax -- would be that the tax would have to be apportioned among the states according to population. That would of course be almost impossible to do with a national ad valorem property tax -- but that's because of the apportionment rule, not because there is some rule that says only the states can impose property taxes (there is no such rule). About the only kind of direct tax that would really work (because of the limitation of the apportionment rule) would be a capitation, or head tax.

In the Pollock case, of course, income taxes on income from property (such as income in the form of interest, dividends and rent) were treated for the first time as direct taxes. However, that effect was negated by the Sixteenth Amendment.

I agree that the other three holdings in Knowlton v. Moore are somewhat tangential. I inserted them in the article for illustrative purposes. You are right, however, that they don't have to be there (as you mentioned on my talk page).

We just need to be careful in describing what the Court ruled in Knowlton v. Moore. The Congress has never been prohibited from imposing a property tax, and that issue never arose in the case, as best I can tell. Yours, Famspear 03:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 09:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)