I support your idea from here, its more effective that one can see their ban status right form the profile, this will help us know more well about the forum member we are about to deal with, also, if possible that a banned account should be unable to receive merits
Banned accounts, inactive accounts, accounts from died people are all deserved to receive merit for all good posts they have ver made before bans, deaths or dormancy.
Merit is for good posts and don't treat good posts differently.
Merit is also not scarce and each month there are many sourced merits, so if you merit good posts of banned accounts, dormant accounts or dead accounts, it won't affect forum merit availability too much.
Satoshi left forum years ago and his posts received thousands of merit.
Same with Hal Finney account.