Why don't we tax the dead? Seriously, they aren't going to object! Why shouldn't we?
Who we tax, and what way, is entirely a choice made by a society. I routinely pay sales tax out of the income that I paid income tax on, and pay extra tax when I buy alcohol- those are all decisions made by society that they were the socially correct way to pay for everything we jointly need as a society. That's all taxes are.
The modern estate tax was created in 1916. In 1906, then President TR gave a speech supporting this kind of tax as a way to try and reduce the power of dynastic wealth- to keep American society from being ossified, and to make sure that the current generation of talented people could amass wealth too.
The modern income tax was created in 1909 as part of an attempt to clear the way for prohibition- a significant part of the Federal budget was paid for with alcohol taxes, and they needed to replace that hole in the budget[1]. For the first three decades it hit only a tiny percentage of the richest, until World War Two when it was expanded and covered a greater percentage of the population, as the Federal government massively expanded and needed more money to pay for its massive size[2].
But those were all the results of political choices, and taxing the dead makes just as much sense.
[1]: Similarly, women's suffrage was also, at least in the US, largely a proxy battle over prohibition- it seems to have been a widely held assumption of everyone in politics in 1910 that as soon as women's suffrage was achieved prohibition would follow immediately afterwards (in fact, prohibition passed two years before women's suffrage). This is why the largest anti-suffrage organization had as its honorary chairwoman Mrs. Adolphus Busch, matriarch of the Budweiser fortune.
[2]: Adam Tooze's book _The Deluge_ has as its basic thesis that the US Government was too small, and had too limited state capacity, which was a major cause of all of the problems of the 1920's and 1930's.
Why not? If someone owes a bunch of taxes when they die, their estate should still be on the hook for it. I don't see any reason that money owed to the government should go to someone's heirs instead just because they happened to die at a specific time
but the money wasn't owed - because the gains were never realized, so the person (who died) never got to enjoy the consumption of that money, so therefore, it doesn't seem fair to take tax from somebody who would not be alive to defend themselves from it.
The heir receiving inheritance should get taxed - on the whole value (B in the OP's nomenclature). But the heir should not have to also pay B-A capital gains, which is a tax that would've been levied on the now dead, had they decided to sell instead of dying.
When someone dies, it's necessary to file a tax return for them, if you're going to probate. The taxes need to be paid for that person, from the assets. So, yes, the norm is to tax the dead.
because the person who should be paying that cut is dead! You don't tax the dead.