A system for providing performance counter inheritance includes an operating system that receives a request of a first application to monitor performance of a second application, the request identifying an event to monitor during the execution of a task associated with the second application. The operating system causes a task counter corresponding to the event to be activated, and automatically activates a child task counter for each child task upon receiving a notification that execution of a corresponding child task is starting. Further, the operating system adds a value of each child task counter to a value of the task counter to determine a total counter value for the task, and provides the total counter value of the task to the first application.