Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
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.
Table of Contents
Overview / William G. Gale and Joel B. Slemrod -- Elements of federal estate taxation / Barry W. Johnson, Jacob M. Mikow, and Martha Britton Eller ; comment by C. Eugene Steuerle -- Avoiding federal wealth transfer taxes / Richard Schmalbeck ; comment by Jane Gravelle -- A framework for assessing estate and gift taxation / Louis Kaplow ; comment by Pierre Pestieau -- Do estate taxes reduce saving? / William G. Gale and Maria G. Perozek ; comment by Roger H. Gordon -- Inequality and wealth accumulation : eliminating the federal gift and estate tax / John Laitner ; comment by Douglas Holtz-Eakin -- The impact of the estate tax on wealth accumulation and avoidance behavior / Wojciech Kopczuk and Joel B. Slemrod ; comment by Alan J. Auerbach -- Charitable giving in life and at death / David Joulfaian ; comment by James R. Hines, Jr. -- Noncompliance with the federal estate tax / Martha Britton Eller, Brian Erard, and Chih-Chin Ho ; comment by Kathleen McGarry -- The distributional burden of taxing estates and unrealized capital gains at death / James M. Poterba and Scott Weisbenner ; comment by Leonard Burman -- Elderly asset management and health -- Jonathan S. Feinstein and Chih-Chin Ho ; comment by Jonathan Skinner.