Behavioral Responses to the Estate Tax: Inter vivos Giving

Estate and gift taxes and incentives for inter vivos giving in the US

This paper describes the current estate and gift tax rules that apply to intergenerational transfers in the US. It summarizes the incentives for inter vivos giving, gifts from a donor to a recipient while the donor is alive, as a strategy for reducing estate tax liability. It shows that the current level of intergenerational transfers is much lower than the level that would be implied by simple...

Descent Rules and Inter Vivos Transfers

Bequests, Inter Vivos Transfers, and Wealth Distribution

This paper extends the heterogeneous agent overlapping generations model with bequests in Nishiyama (2000) by adding two-way intergenerational altruism and inter vivos transfers. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, the paper measures time preference and intergenerational altruism consistent with the economy¶s capital-output ratio and the sizes of intergenerational transfers. In the model...

Evidence of Tax-Induced Individual Behavioral Responses

2 " The Clinton revenue estimates are based on the fallacy that taxpayers will not change their behavior in response to a 37% jump in their marginal tax rates... " Martin Feldstein (1993) Estimating the effect of income taxes on individual behaviors such as labor supply, compensation, saving, and taxable income have been focal points of economic research for several decades. Because income taxe...

Investigating Behavioral Responses to Positive Inducements for Filing Tax Returns

A significant amount of non-compliance associated with the personal income tax is due to the taxpayers who are not “in the system,” not having filed a tax return in the recent past or perhaps ever. We use experimental laboratory methods to examine two types of positive incentives for filing tax returns: tax credits and social safety net benefits, both of which are conditional on tax filing. Our...