Rethinking Estate and Gift Taxation

Abstract

[© Brookings Institution] 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. Contributors include Louis Kaplow (Harvard Law School), Barry Johnson, Jacob M. Mikow, Martha Britton Eller, and Chih-Chin Ho (Internal Revenue Service), Richard Schmalbeck (Duke University Law School), John Laitner (University of Michigan), James Poterba (MIT), Scott Weisbenner and Maria Perozek (Federal Reserve System), David Joulfaian (U.S. Treasury Department), Wojciech Kopczuk (University of Michigan), and Jonathan Feinstein (Yale University School of Management).

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