Rage-bait articles about people angry they're getting free money are the real inheritance tax...

Is the future of British newspapers just endless stories of well-off people pretending to be victims?

Previously: The Daily Telegraph, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and some very weird Winnie the Pooh fan fiction...

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If the Daily Mail Group Trust — the owner of the Daily Mail — succeeds in its bid to buy the Telegraph titles, we’ll have moved ever closer to a British press where the majority of the output is rage-bait about house prices and news stories that make sure to note the value of murder victims’ houses.

This weekend, the i paper, another member of the Mail family, produced a classic example of how rage-bait works on the money pages, with a case study about a woman who’s livid that she had to pay inheritance tax at all. The subject was Jill Lemon, a lady with a sitcom character’s name, who was very unhappy about the bill that came along with inheriting her parents’ £1.2m home.

The headline — We were hit with a £148k inheritance tax bill when mum died at 97 - it’s disgusting — is designed to get both sides of the argument riled up. Those people who genuinely believe that inheritance tax is appalling will share in Lemon’s disgust, while those who think that it’s fair enough that you pay some tax on a huge and unearned windfall will be enraged by the article’s whole premise.

The article begins by setting the scene:

When Jill Lemon’s mother died earlier this year, as well as dealing with the grief, she had to deal with another hurdle – sorting out paying a “wicked” £148,000 tax bill. Jill, 71, who lives in North Wales, lost her mother Audrey Lemon at the age of 97 in April. Her father Alan had died six years earlier at the age of 94.

When Audrey and Alan bought their house in Oxshott, Surrey, 60 years ago, it cost them just £21,000.

Now, the four-bedroom property, which has a third of an acre of land and a swimming pool, is valued at £1.2m.

The key point there is that Lemon’s parents bought the house in 1965 for £21,000 and it’s now valued at £1.2m. That’s not the product of hard work; it’s the result of house price inflation. Those gains were achieved by sitting on the same piece of land for six decades. But the point of the i article is to pretend that inheritance tax is some kind of new and shocking development:

The house, along with Audrey’s other assets, went to Jill and her two brothers – but to their horror, they were landed with a £148,000 inheritance tax bill. “It is wicked,” said Jill, who is widowed and a mother of three and a grandmother of four.

“… to their horror” is a phrase that would be suitable if the article were about some wild and unexpected occurrence rather than a simple fact of the UK tax system, and the word “landed” doubles down on the idea that it was a surprise. We’re told that Jill is a widowed mother and grandmother to emphasise just how cruel it is that she has to pay tax like anybody else.

The opportunity for tiny violin concertos continues:

[Lemon] said: “Why shouldn’t my mum and dad be able to pass on the money they worked so hard for and made over their lifetime to us? I don’t really need the money as it is not like I’m destitute or anything – but inheritance tax is deeply unfair, and I am furious about it.”

As the article points out, inheritance tax kicks in at 40 per cent of someone’s assets above £325,000, so Lemon’s mum and dad were able to pass on a good chunk of cash tax-free, and when that bill is paid, there’ll still be a lot more money to divvy up between her and her siblings. The writer of the article doesn’t push back at Lemon’s assertion that inheritance tax is “deeply unfair” because, as we so often are with the British press, we’re in the land of vibes here.

After several more paragraphs bemoaning the “cruel tax” and the admittedly stupid rule that means the first instalment of inheritance tax payments has to be made before probate is granted and executors get legal authority to access an estate, the article reveals that “an ISA account belonging to [Lemon’s] parents was discovered containing £93,000". Another handy windfall that allowed Lemon and her siblings to pay the majority of the amount owed to HMRC directly.

You just have to look at the quotes chosen for the story to see that the article is out to enrage the reader:

She added: “My dad made a lot of money and he and my mum had a nice lifestyle and travelled and had a good life. But they worked hard for that and paid taxes all their life – so why should they have their assets taxed again after their death?

“What makes me really angry is all this money has already been taxed. You pay tax on everything you buy all your life, you pay tax on your income, tax on your car, tax when you buy your home.”

Again, it’s about making the part of the audience who will never see that kind of money furious while also catering to those who are equally aggrieved that they have to pay any tax whatsoever. What the piece doesn’t do is reveal anything unusual. It boils down to “woman doesn’t like inheritance tax”. There’s nothing noteworthy here.

There is a point in the article where Lemon and I agree, but for entirely different reasons. She rages: “Why should the King and the Royal Family not pay any inheritance tax when we have given them all the money in the first place, but then hard-working families like mine are hit by this horrible tax. It should be illegal.” The correct conclusion is not “there should be no inheritance tax” but that the monarchy should not be able to weasel out of paying its fair share.

Let’s also consider who the journalist goes to for further comment on the issue:

…John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which campaigns for lower taxes, [says inheritance tax] should be scrapped altogether.

“There is simply no moral justification for giving the state the power to effectively arbitrarily seize the assets of a parent hoping to pass on their estate to their children or grandchildren,” he said.

If the i paper wanted to reflect a true range of views, it might have grabbed a quote from any one of the other think-tanks not designed purely to advocate for wannabe non-taxpayers. Perhaps the Resolution Foundation, which advocates for tightening inheritance tax relief to raise more money and improve living standards for low-to-middle-income families, or Demos, which has proposed a banded inheritance tax system. The question the newspaper could also have asked Mrs Lemon is this: Who does she think should pay taxes?

But that’s not the point of that kind of case study. Instead, the rage-bait is there to allow the well-off to cosplay as the hard-done-by. And if the Mail’s ownership stake in the British press continues to grow, there’ll be a lot more where that came from…

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