Anecdotes from England.

[tolbiny]

My parents returned from a family funeral in England yesterday. Naturally much of their conversations with relatives who live there turned towards two subjects, health care and inheritance. We have some British posters here who should be able to weigh in on the second and third hand stories here.

The inheritance tax- basic understanding is that estates under 300,000 pounds in england are untaxed with everything over 300,000 being taxed at 40%. Also inheritance cannot be claimed until AFTER tax has been payed on the assessed value. In other words if someones estate consisted of a 500,000 pound house those named in the will would have to pay the government 80,000 pounds before they could sell the house. Same with stocks, bonds, jewelry, furniture, ect.

Naturally many people are being left inheritances which they do not have the cash to cover the tax which has lead to an industry of lenders to front the money so that the property can be claimed and sold. This effectively makes the tax rate for certain groups of people 40% + X% charged by the lenders.

Health care- The NIH is apparently in the black for the first time in years, though the middle class in England believes that this has been accomplished through restriction of access, mainly through hospitals refusing patients. Increasing pressure to balance their budget has lead to restrictions on who has access based upon income levels. Patients are required to spend their assets on their treatment until they are below set thresholds.

The outcome of these policies is that people in their 60s are spending down their assets (skiing vacations in other parts of Europe seem popular) since they no longer control what happens to large portions of their estates after they die, or they will be forced to spend it on health care that they had previously believed would be covered.