EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Bequest and Tax Planning: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns

Wojciech Kopczuk

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2007, vol. 122, issue 4, 1801-1854

Abstract: I study bequest and wealth accumulation behavior of the wealthy (subject to the estate tax) shortly before death. The onset of a terminal illness leads to a very significant reduction in the value of estates reported on tax returns—fifteen to twenty percent with illness lasting "months to years" and about five to ten percent in the case of illness reported as lasting "days to weeks." I provide evidence suggesting that these findings cannot be explained by real shocks to net worth, such as medical expenses or lost income, but instead reflect "deathbed" estate planning. The results suggest that wealthy individuals actively care about disposition of their estates but that this preference is dominated by the desire to hold on to their wealth while alive.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (99)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/qjec.2007.122.4.1801 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Bequest and Tax Planning: Evidence From Estate Tax Returns (2006) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:122:y:2007:i:4:p:1801-1854.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:122:y:2007:i:4:p:1801-1854.