You should really read up on how Canada fails to tax stock inheritance. That is one of the main tax loopholes used to generate additional generational wealth. The same loophole also exists south of the border, so you can read up on it from US sources as well. It’s slightly different, but conceptually the same.

For example, your parents buy a stock for $1 and leave it to a child (or for that matter, anyone) in their will, the tax code changes — or steps up — its base value, from the original price to whatever it was worth when they died. Say that stock was worth $100 when they died. If the child sells it later for, say, $150, the child would owe taxes only on the $50 upside, instead of the entire $149 profit the family made off the stock over the course of two generations.