Transfer motives and tax policy
By: Louis Kaplow.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 6340; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 6340.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 12
Subjects: Inheritance and transfer tax -- Law and legislation.; Gifts -- Taxation -- Law and legislation.
Description: This paper considers the optimal tax treatment of voluntary transfers to individuals in a framework that integrates redistributive income taxation and estate and gift taxation. Under this formulation, redistributive considerations become secondary. The optimal tax treatment of transfers depends upon the differences between expenditures on transfers and ordinary personal consumption. It turns out that some types of transfers confer a sort of positive externality on donees, some create tax revenue externalities, and some affect donors' and donees' marginal utilities of income in a manner relevant to the optimal taxation problem. Different types of transfers have qualitatively different effects.
Notes: "December 1997."

JEL no. D64, H21, H23, K34.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 12).

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