How to Avoid Inheritance Tax - A practical case study guide to becoming immortal

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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?