Estate Taxes and Charitable Bequests: Evidence from Two Tax Regimes

David Joulfaian ()

Public Economics from EconWPA

Abstract: Much of the literature on the effects of estate taxation on charitable bequests has relied on cross sectional data, reflecting the uniqueness of death. Few have explored longitudinal data to exploit exogenous variations in tax regimes. The latter, however, continue to be susceptible to omitted variable as well as measurement error biases attributable to changes in the treatment of spousal bequests and frequent changes in tax regimes. This paper explores the effects of the estate tax on charitable bequests using administrative data from two tax regimes where earlier biases are minimized. The deductibility of charitable bequests is found to have significant implications for giving. However, the effects of estate tax repeal are much smaller. These findings are sensitive to expectations of the tax regime in effect at time of death.

Keywords: Bequests; Taxes; Charitable Giving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 H24 H31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc and nep-pbe
Date: 2005-05-14
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 32. pdf document, 32 pages, uses US estate (inheritance) tax data over two period.
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0505004

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