How to Avoid Inheritance Tax - A practical case study guide to becoming immortal
Avoid inheritance tax ...forever
I'll be discussing different ways to putting off your inheritance tax ...forever. There are two schools of thought. One is virtually impossible and requires years of study and the other involves becoming immortal. Since becoming immortal is a much more interesting way to evade inheritance tax, I'll leave the virtually impossible art of tax law to braver, duller souls.
We'll be discussing several ways that people avoid dying. These are great because they mean you have more time to spend on what you love doing, they put off inheritance taxes and they're typically great for your health. But these are not end-all solutions to all your problems. Immortality comes with a variety of costs some of which will make the life you've extended not worth living.
Danger: Watch out for
Vampire hunters - A major drawback of being a vampire is that you may be hunted
Daylight - Is it really worth living forever if you can never enjoy another sunset with the one you love/suck.
Mark of Cain - Depending on your stance in the "Is there a God" debate, you might be uncomfortable with the unholy consequences of this immortality.
Goth kids - You won't be able to shake them. They'll think you're so cool and they'll love how you're nothing like all the conformists that make fun of them for all dressing the same way.
Garlic - This will make your breath bad and you will be lonely.
Vampirism
Becoming a vampire is an easy way to avoid inheritance tax without spending four years at law school just to figure out exactly how much inheritance tax you have to pay.
Traditional means of becoming a vampire involved being bitten by a vampire and then replacing some of that lost blood with the vampires blood. The trick here is to find a vampire that doesn't want to just kill you or feed off you like a moocow for the rest of your mortal, unholy existence.
You have to attract a vampire willing to convert you. It's a good idea to be a challenge. If you're too easy or eager, a vampire will be uninterested. Their long lifespans and superior senses make most humans a plain old bore. To really captivate the attention of that special bloodsucker, you've gotta woo them. Make them chase you a little. It might be a good idea to make it seem like you're actually morally repulsed by the whole notion of vampirism or any other predatory/non-Christian behavior. Make that vamp want to bite you!
Evil spells
Many people find immortality by way of casting evil spells.
A very common school of magic is the "eating and/or harming children" school which is largely powered by the symbolic nature of corrupting and destroying youthful innocence to extend your own sorry life. Baba Yaga does not just eat children for the heck of it. She's been avoiding life insurance through six Presidents, four tzars and a Decemberist revolt.
The devil's bargain
You can always get immortality through outside council. Why do the work when you can just get the demon to do it for you? Well, you'll want to watch out as there is often a hefty price to this method of avoiding inheritance task. The devil is in the details of this particular strategy.
If you're not careful, you might end up signing an agreement with one particular way of dying which you will invariably succumb to. Then it is likely that the devil will have your soul. Otherwise, there are a variety of agreements where you will be immortal but honorbound to serve his unholy Host. Be careful! What good is immortality if you have to spend your whole day hunting down angels or reaping the damned, sewing dissent, etc.?
Wish-making
Wish-making is harder to come by since you need to find some sort of wish granting entity. You might happen across a magic lamp or talking fish. Rub all the lamps in your house. Many people own magic lamps their whole (oh-so-short) lives without realizing they had the power to avoid inheritance tax all along. You might also check out your local ancient Chinese market for some sort of mystical relic shrouded in mysterious mystery. I would however add the caveat that you should heed the shopkeeper's advice against misusing the item, although I know in my heart of hearts you won't.
This might be the perfect opportunity to plan that fishing trip you've been looking forward to. Go out to the open sea and fish all day and night. You might catch a magical wish-granting fish, or you might not. But you'll definitely have time to think. And that's one of life's greatest gifts.
Magic fountains
You may enjoy life everlasting if you can find the darned thing. It's not like they post road maps (or like those road maps are accurate). There are occasionally Springs of Youth which presumably feed the fountains. One such spring was capted by Tuck in Tuck Everlasting. But like the protagonist of that novel or the main character in The Fountain, you'll likely find yourself regretting the gift that lets you outlives the relatives you were protecting from inheritance tax in the first place.
Experience in NetHack has taught me that a lot can happen quaffing the water of a fountain. Consult a spoiler for more detailed information.
Cloning
This isn't really the same thing as living forever. To demonstrate, I'll ask you to envision a world where you live forever. A lifetime of unlimited infinity guarantees that anything that can reasonably happen will happen. One such occurence is that two of you (you and a clone, although you're both clones at this point) are walking around at the same time. Now which of you is the one that is living forever? Are you both living forever? That seems like a cop out. Do you really want to feel like a cop out just to live forever in an effort to avoid paying inheritance tax?
Ghost in the machine
You can always download your sentience into a robot or simulacra, but this is kind of a hybrid of a horcrux (see evil spell) and futurist idealism (see cloning). There are plenty of people predicting the rise of spiritual machines and there is a lot of cyberpunk literature coming out of Japan where a guy downloads into a robot hidden in his briefcase in the first twelve pages of the book. Do you want to be that guy?
Comments
Thanks for the Grendel advice, it sounds just like what i need for my studies - and true to type dragon/monster. Don't you think it deserves further philosophical exploraiton that our present culture embraced money "greed is good" as its highest value and the banks build the new "cathedrals", the artistic architectural expressions of our deeply felt aspirations? The towers soaring to the sky - which does disown and spurns them like Bellerophon's egotistic flight - the fall of the Twin Towers struck by the thunderbolt from a clear sky? I am still working on the TWIN bit, usually monsters are quite alone, although they do have brothers and sisters, but only one of them is usually struck, like Medusa, one of the Gorgons. What do you think?
The lesons provided by king Midas' fate elucidate the consequences of focusing on money/gold collecting with the important emphasis on emotional vacuum and loss of joy of life.
Haha, I got a kick out of this article. Of all these options, Vampirism sounds fun, but I think I'd stick to being downloaded, haha.
- Author
Well said! I'll think twice before asking that female djinn out on an expensive date. You might like reading Grendel by John Gardner. It tells the story of Beowulf from the monster's perspective and it turns out Grendel is a subjectivist philosophe. He has a meeting or two with the dragon that Beowulf slays in his old age and the dragon displays this very notion of collecting money as an end in itself. The dragon amasses gold even though he knows its worthless and he'll die doing it just because gold masses are an end in and of themselves and he looks ridiculous because of it!
most genies offer three wishes/choices because number three is the number of divinity and supernatural power of the male kind. Female genies behave slightly differently. The wishes represent psychological archetypal attitudes to life based on emotional attituds to life, which seem to be quite definitely defined and consistent in their types irrespective regional or geographic locations, historical periods, cultural differneces, races, etc. the wishes themselves may sound different but the attitudes and emotions from which their motives have risen are uncannily and remarkable similar.
the immortals are not concerned with money because they are not material - they are a thought a dream a feeling a spirit. if they need embodiment - the host offers what is needed as part of the deal.
vampires cannot focus on amassing property, money or building wealth because all energies available to them are spent on searching for "new blood" to remedy their terrifying sense of inner emptiness. they suck the living energies from people naive and imprudent enough to trust or love them, and whom they pollute in return with their selfish compulsion to take away the most precious life force - the sense of self and independence.
Vampirism is a serious psychological condition, not just an ordinary dysfunctionality or neurosis, because it is so profoundly and irreversibly destructive to psyche, especially young.
it is always useful to keep in mind that money is not a thing or anything that exists - it is just "manure" and its best uses, that is, the applications that are most beneficial and enriching take place when money are used as a fertilizer to create growth of somehting - anyhting except itself.
People devoted to amassing money for the sake of collecting their nominal value are only accumulators of manure - benefiting no-one and creating nothing, and drowning in it psychologically.
God is dead, long live new idol money; lets build monster buildings to house it in banks which overshadow old cathedrals.
greed is not good, and worshippers of manure inevitably smell bad. And still - not a millimeter closer to immortality, which can be given or earned, but not bought or stolen.
- Author
Another excellent point!
There was a Tales from the Crypt about a man who was granted nine lives who made an enormous fortune letting people pay to watch him die on stage. Unfortunately he forgot to count the first death (which was when he was granted the nine) and he was buried alive for real. But minus that exceptionally stupid blunder, he made quite a bit of money.
Running out of money shouldn't be a problem. The "Highlander," McCloud, ran an antique shop - assumingly, he'd collected a lot of stuff throughout his years. And vampires pillage sunken ships and unknown treasure troves, according to Anne Rice. I'd always assumed that an immortal would eventually gain the knowledge of keeping a positive cash flow, through investments, inheritances (his own, from himself) and such.
- Author
Haha, that's a good point AND the reason that most genies come with three wishes. You might consider that if you're immortal you need no money, but the life of a hobo is not the life eternal.
Nice answer, got one problem if I become immortal though, I'll run out of money
;0)
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