Could an Inheritance Tax Save America?
Or, should we just tax billionaires more?
If you think we should have an inheritance tax, I read an article today from Market Watch that should give you pause. The article wasn’t about inheritance tax. It was about how to better handle inherited wealth. The statistic that made me think - “Younger generations collectively stand to inherit about $16 trillion over the coming decade.”
That is a lot of money. America’s national debt was nearly $37 trillion on July 29, 2025. If we took the entire inheritance of everyone in America over the next 10 years, we couldn’t pay off half of our national debt.
I recorded a short video about getting a tariff rebate check. I am against it. We should be paying off our national debt. It is a huge problem.
According to the Treasury department for June, our cumulative interest expense for fiscal 2025 was $749 billion. We will spend well over a trillion dollars in 2025 on interest. In my opinion, that money is not performing any public good.
Inheritance tax alone, won’t save us.
What if we tax billionaires? According to Inequality.org, on March 18, 2024, the U.S. had 737 billionaires worth a combined $5.529 trillion. That is roughly a sixth of what we need to pay off our debt.
What is the solution? We must balance the budget, so we are not increasing the problem. Reducing interest would help balance the budget. We need to improve revenue. Inheritance tax and taxing billionaires might help, but those alone will not solve the problem.
We need to grow the economy and optimize taxes to improve our revenue stream. I was dubious about tariffs. I hope they work.