Somewhat to my surprise, a  bill in the Pennsylvania legislature that would reduce the inheritance tax to 0% for transfers to children under the age of 21 (HB 291) has made it out of committee and received its first consideration.

This same bill was introduced in the last session and went nowhere, and seems to have been inspired by a change in 2000 that imposed a 0% tax rate on transfers from minor children to parents.

Leaving aside the weirdness of imposing different taxes on children who are 18 and children who are 22, the measure would also introduce some complexity in the calculations when the residue of an estate goes to children and some are under 21 and some are not.  Like the situation when a charity receives a fraction of the after-tax residue, the tax calculation will become inter-related (or circular) in most cases.

I’m not going to worry about it too much because it hasn’t passed yet (and I hope it doesn’t).