Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths?

Joshua Gans () and Andrew Leigh ()

No 530, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

Abstract: In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, we show that approximately 50 deaths were shifted from the week before the abolition to the week after (amounting to over half of those who would have been eligible to pay the tax). Our results imply that over the very short run, the death rate is highly elastic with respect to the inheritance tax rate.

Keywords: behavioural responses to taxation; timing of deaths; estate tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H26 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-pbe and nep-pub
Date: 2006-08
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Journal Article: Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths? (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:auu:dpaper:530

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