Behavioral responses to inheritance and gift taxation: Evidence from Germany

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Glogowsky, Ulrich
• 署名单位: Johannes Kepler University Linz
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104309
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Inheritance Taxation; Gift Taxation; behavioral responses; Bunching at Kinks

摘要

The desirability of inheritance and gift taxes depends on individuals' tax responsiveness. This paper demonstrates how strongly, and in what way, the German inheritance and gift tax influences taxpayer behavior. To that end, it combines administrative data with cross-bracket tax variation: a convex kink in the tax liability precedes a concave kink. Extending the bunching approach to such double-kinked tax schedules, I document that individuals tailor their taxable wealth transfers to the schedules. One type of response dominates for inheritances: testators engage in testament planning. The magnitude of the testament-planning response is comparable to that of inter vivos gifts. However, neither the overall responses of gifts nor those of inheritances heavily interfere with tax revenue collection: the associated short-run net-of-tax elasticities of taxable wealth transfers lie below 0.1. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.