Any type of taxation that is placed on the assets of a decedent when those assets are redistributed to beneficiaries in accordance with the wishes expressed in a legal will and testament is referred to as death tax. Inheritance tax is one of the more common examples of a death tax. However, depending on the laws that apply in a given jurisdiction a death tax may take on several different forms.
Death tax in USA
In the United States, a death tax refers to the incidence of an estate tax that is the obligation of a beneficiary to pay as a part of the process of assuming control of the property. Closely related to death tax is the inheritance tax, by which taxes are applied to any type of financial asset that is willed to the beneficiary. For applying the death tax there is no uniform process among all states within the Union.
