A Review of Inheritance Tax from Jurisprudential, Historical Approach: A Cross country Comparison

Inheritance and transfer of legacy to the deceased’s heirs is not a new issue. This issue and its related clear regulations have existed in all civilizations and societies worldwide. Inheritance tax together with the other common taxes have been devised, introduced and implemented in the developed countries and other countries followed them. This paper seeks to review these questions: 1. Is there any financial obligations on legacy in Islamic teachings knowing that Islam has focused on it and there are related and detailed decrees in Koran and sonnat? 2. Is there any form of inheritance tax in the ancient Islamic governments or even in the other caliphs’ rules? If the answer to these questions are negative, what is the decree related to inheritance taxation? Is it considered one of the cases of “vacuum zone theory”? 4. What is the position of inheritance tax in the other countries? 5. Which of the documents (i.e. current laws or the reviewed bills in Iran) are more consistent with the studies’ results? For answering these questions, the sufficient studies should be done in the other countries of the world in a descriptive method by three jurisprudential, historical and comparative approaches and finally the current law and proposed bill should be evaluated and views and recommendations should be presented for more consistency with the studies done.