Congress is 'serial offender' about Inheritance Tax .... while Rajiv "inherited" Indira's properties ..... even in 2023 Chidambaram favoured it, UPA sent a proposal to Planning Commission

The idea of reimposing such a tax was first mentioned by Home Minister P Chidambaram in 2011 during a Planning Commission (now Niti Aayog) meeting chaired by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Chidambaram was the finance minister during the first four years of the UPA-I government.

Chidambaram had mooted the idea in a bid to raise tax resources and shore up the declining tax to GDP ratio. A year later, he raised the matter again at a National Institute of Public Finance and Policy event. Chidambaram said it was high time for an inheritance tax while flagging the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.

"Have we paid little attention to accumulation of wealth in a few hands? I am still hesitant to talk about inter-generational equity and therefore inheritance tax," he said.

The idea made a comeback in 2013, when Chidambaram presented the last full Budget of the UPA-2 government. In fact, Chidambaram was convinced that an inheritance tax could raise revenue while serving the UPA's political purpose.

However, not everyone in the Cabinet as well as stakeholders were convinced of the logic of an inheritance tax, and it never made its way to the Budget.

The matter went into cold storage as the Narendra Modi-led NDA government won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In 2014, Jayant Sinha, then Minister of State for Finance, had publicly vouched for the introduction of inheritance tax. Sinha had said such a tax would take away some of the advantages that dynastic business people had and help in levelling the playing field. BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya endorsed Sinha's views. 

Inheritance tax is prevalent in countries like the UK, Japan, France, and Finland. In the United States, only six states have inheritance tax.

The story of an inheritance tax in India goes back seven decades. In 1953, Parliament, then led by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, passed a legislation, bringing into force the Estate Duty Act, which was conceived with the aim of reducing glaring economic disparity in a nascent country just six years into Independence. 

Estate duty was imposed on the total value of property held by an individual at the time of their demise, with 40% the maximum marginal rate levied on property exceeding the value of ₹50 lakh. 

Under the act, the tax had to be paid by heirs when they inherited property or assets — both movable and immovable — that were passed on to them.