Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation

Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation

Author: William G. Gale

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011-07-01

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9780815719861

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Although estate and gift taxes raise a small fraction of federal revenues, they have become sources of increasing political controversy. This book is designed to inform the current policy debate and build a conceptual basis for future scholarship. The book contains eleven original studies of estate and gift taxes, along with discussants' comments. The essays provide background and historical information; analyze the optimal taxation of estates and gifts; examine the effects of the tax on charitable contributions, saving behavior, the distribution and level of wealth, tax avoidance and tax evasion; and explore the effects of alternatives to estate taxation.


A Theory of Property

A Theory of Property

Author: Stephen R. Munzer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990-01-26

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 1316583473

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This book represents a major new statement on the issue of property rights. It argues for the justification of some rights of private property while showing why unequal distributions of private property are indefensible. Three features of the book are especially salient: it offers a challenging new pluralist theory of justification; the argument integrates perceptive analyses of the great classical theorists Aristotle, Locke, Hegel and Marx with a discussion of contemporary philosophers such as Nozick and Rawls; and the author moves with assurance among philosophy, law and economics to present a very broad, interdisciplinary study.


The New Dynamic Public Finance

The New Dynamic Public Finance

Author: Narayana R. Kocherlakota

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1400835275

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Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance. An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, The New Dynamic Public Finance provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.


Economic Transfers in the United States

Economic Transfers in the United States

Author: Marilyn Moon

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0226535061

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In recent years the definition of an economic transfer—a payment to an individual or institution that does not arise out of current productive activity—has been subject to even wider interpretation. This volume addresses that trend and introduces new methods of measuring transfers in the American economy. Social security, private pension benefits, housing, and health care are traditional kinds of transfers. Accurate measurements of the degree and effect of these and of other, newly interpreted transfers are vital to economic policy making. Though this volume is not directly concerned with policy-making issues, it does impinge on many areas of current public concern; methods of transfer valuation, for example, may affect how we view the status of the aged. Researchers, policy analysts, and those who compile statistics on which social programs are based on will value the diverse approaches of these ten papers and their accompanying comments. Taken together the essays give great insight into the complexities of defining transfers and provide a wealth of new analytic methods. They were developed from material presented at the Income and Wealth Conference on Social Accounting for Transfers held at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1982.


Does Atlas Shrug?

Does Atlas Shrug?

Author: Joel Slemrod

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 9780674001541

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Since the introduction of the income tax in 1913, controversy has raged about how heavily to tax the rich. Opponents of high tax rates claim that heavy assessments have negative incentives on the productivity of some of our most talented citizens; supporters stress the importance of the rich shouldering their "fair share," and decry the loopholes that permit many to escape their obligations. Notably absent from this debate is hard evidence about the actual impact of taxes on the behavior of the affluent. This book presents evidence by leading economists of the effects of taxes on the formation of businesses, the supply of labor, the form of executive compensation, the accumulation of wealth, the allocation of portfolios, and the realization of capital gains. Among its findings are that the labor supply of the rich remained unchanged in the face of large tax cuts in 1986, and that in late 1992 executives exercised billions of dollars' worth of stock options in order to beat the tax increases expected in 1993. The book also presents a history of efforts to tax the rich, a demographic snapshot of the financially affluent, and a road map to widely used tax-avoidance strategies. Does Atlas Shrug? will be of great interest to policymakers and interested citizens who want to know how much tax revenue could really be gained by increasing tax rates on the rich, or whether low capital gains tax rates really spur economic growth.


Federal Taxation of Wealth Transfers

Federal Taxation of Wealth Transfers

Author: Stephanie J. Willbanks

Publisher: Aspen Publishing

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 974

ISBN-13: 1454874716

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With an emphasis on tax planning, Federal Taxation of Wealth Transfers: Cases and Problems integrates stimulating problems with statutes, regulations, and cases to create a highly teachable and student-friendly casebook. This casebook emphasizes problem solving, statutory construction, and policy-analysis skills, and is ideal for 2- or 3-credit courses in estate and gift taxation. The Fourth Edition has been updated to incorporate the 2012 American Taxpayer Relief Act provisions and the final portability regulations. It offers new case law, analyses and problems regarding private annuities, net gifts, and ascertainable standards. The text has been expanded to feature new cases, administrative rulings, and studies. Existing cases and text have been edited or deleted to highlight essential themes. The casebook is logically organized but its flexible organization accommodates reorganizing material to fit individual course structures, and could be used for a basic wealth transfer tax class or to complement either a wills and trust course or an estate planning course.


Retooling Social Security for the 21st Century

Retooling Social Security for the 21st Century

Author: C. Eugene Steuerle

Publisher: The Urban Insitute

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780877666028

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Study of the Social Security debate arguing that Social Security needs reform and offering a blueprint for implementing them to meet today's and tomorrow's needs.


Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth

Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth

Author: Andreas Fagereng

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2018-07-27

Total Pages: 69

ISBN-13: 1484370066

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We provide a systematic analysis of the properties of individual returns to wealth using twelve years of population data from Norway’s administrative tax records. We document a number of novel results. First, during our sample period individuals earn markedly different average returns on their financial assets (a standard deviation of 14%) and on their net worth (a standard deviation of 8%). Second, heterogeneity in returns does not arise merely from differences in the allocation of wealth between safe and risky assets: returns are heterogeneous even within asset classes. Third, returns are positively correlated with wealth: moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of the financial wealth distribution increases the return by 3 percentage points - and by 17 percentage points when the same exercise is performed for the return to net worth. Fourth, wealth returns exhibit substantial persistence over time. We argue that while this persistence partly reflects stable differences in risk exposure and assets scale, it also reflects persistent heterogeneity in sophistication and financial information, as well as entrepreneurial talent. Finally, wealth returns are (mildly) correlated across generations. We discuss the implications of these findings for several strands of the wealth inequality debate.