A great generational wealth transfer is upon us, and it cannot happen soon enough. Over the next three decades some £5.5 trillion is forecast to pass down the generations — that is nearly twice the value of our national debt.

And, of course, the taxman wants a big slice of this. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the inheritance tax threat has been turned up a notch, as frozen thresholds chomp away at your wealth while inflation renders it less and less valuable.

We may have more money, but it isn’t worth as much as it used to be and the taxman is taking more of it away from us.

The reason this great wealth transfer should happen sooner rather than later is because, for now, family money is perhaps the only way of ensuring that your loved ones can prosper. And the longer this wealth transfer takes, the more money will be lost to taxes.

While many of you will be happy to pay what you consider to be your fair share of tax (public services need funding after all), I suggest that we have long crossed that line and that the rates of tax we are now being asked to pay are damaging to our lives and to the wider economy. We simply don’t get what we pay for.

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While no one has much sympathy for six-figure earners, it’s an utterly damning sign that even those who earn in excess of £100,000 in Britain do not feel well-off. Our inaugural Times Wealth Survey last month revealed that most additional rate taxpayers did not consider themselves rich.

It’s a slippery slope, because if you don’t feel well-off, you start to feel like hard work doesn’t pay like it should and a better life could be found elsewhere. This is why we are starting to see promising young graduates flee Britain for fairer shores — taking their worth and tax with them.

Our Wealth Survey also found that 61 per cent of the British public think those who are well-off mostly inherited their money, while 21 per cent considered that the rich had earned it themselves. In all, half of us think that being well-off is mostly down to luck, while around one in three of us think hard work plays a more important role. The truth is perhaps that family wealth is more likely than work to allow you to live a better life.

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Among my generation, those who have received family help when buying a home are undoubtedly more comfortable. They have less mortgage debt, they have been able to start saving more into their pensions and been able to invest. Others are still trapped behind the seemingly unsurmountable hurdle of buying their first home.

It’s obviously unsatisfactory that these people are less likely to buy a home, but it’s now evident that increasing taxes will not change this. This is a wider problem that higher taxes cannot solve alone. We need a lower tax economy to encourage investment and growth. Taxing wealth fixes nothing.

Grandparents and parents can either redistribute their wealth themselves or let the government do it for them. Certainly, many will be questioning this government’s spending priorities after Rachel Reeves squeezed workers and savers to fund a welfare splurge in her budget last month.

No one is entitled to inherit money and should certainly not expect it, but increasingly it makes more and more sense for wealth to be kept within the family.

Indeed, I wonder if the inheritance tax take will fall, or at least fail to meet expectations, because so many aggrieved families will be forced to take action to protect their beneficiaries from a bill, to stop their money from being appropriated by the state to pay for something that isn’t sustainable.

We also live in a time where giving away your money tax-free is still possible. George Osborne’s pension freedoms have made this easier, but those freedoms are now being chipped away with the income tax threshold freeze and the inheritance tax threat now hanging over our retirement savings. Who knows what tax grabs we could have thrust upon us next year.

We are living under a high-tax government, but I’m not so sure that will change any time soon. The tax squeeze should make us all reconsider exactly what we are saving and investing for, and whether we want to see our money put to good use and enjoyed while we are still alive.

Transferring wealth to family — for now — is perhaps the only way to preserve what you’ve worked for all your life.