Estate Taxation, Capital Gains Taxations, and Taxpayer Behavior

本项目将调查遗产税和资本利得税对家庭财务决策的影响。1997年的《纳税人救济法》为高净值家庭面临的边际遗产、赠与和资本利得税税率提供了重要的新变化。自1983年以来每三年进行一次的消费者财务调查，自1989年以来以可比格式进行，提供了足够的高净值家庭的重复横截面信息，以分析这些税收如何影响纳税人的行为。该项目分为三个子项目。第一个研究现行税法规定允许"基准阶梯"因为通过遗产转移的资本资产影响生前赠与和资本收益的实现。分析将集中在资本利得税和遗产税之间的权衡。当个人考虑是否出售升值的资产，并将收益作为生者之间的礼物送给子女或其他方时，就会出现这种权衡，或者持有资产直到死亡，届时它将被列入潜在的应纳税遗产，但获得基础升级。该项目的中心实证重点将是使用消费者财务调查的数据估计生前捐赠的模型。有待检验的假设是，那些通过持有资产直到去世而获益最多的家庭特别不可能进行生前礼物。实证结果将提供证据，说明资本利得税规则和遗产税在多大程度上导致资本资产增值的高净值家庭的资产"锁定"。第二个子项目将根据消费者财务调查，开发新的证据，说明在给定时间间隔内实现累积资本收益的可能性。这些信息将被用来探讨资产价值的变化，如1990年代公司股票价格的上涨，可能会影响变现和资本利得税收入。它还将用于对已实现资本收益的实际应计税率进行新的估计。现有的估计，这一有效税率依赖于汇总数据，而不是householdlevel的信息，是基于过时的信息，资产变现rate.Third子项目将探讨通过税收的实现资本利得对共同基金投资者的行为的影响。它将研究共同基金的“税收效率”对基金现金流入的影响，从而概括了以前的研究，分析了税前回报如何影响现金流入。它还将考虑决定不同共同基金的税收效率的因素，以及共同基金分配对联邦税收收入的影响。更一般地说，这项研究将提供新的证据，说明投资者在选择投资组合时是否考虑了不同投资方案的税收负担。

This project will investigate the effect of estate taxes and capital gains taxes on household financial decisions. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 provides important new variation in the marginal estate, gift, and capital gains tax rates facing high net worth households. The Survey of Consumer Finances, which has been conducted every three years since 1983, and in comparable format since 1989, provides enough information on repeated cross-sections of high net worth households to permit analysis of how these taxes affect taxpayer behavior.The project is divided into three subprojects.The first considers how the current tax law provision allowing "basis step-up" for capital assets passed through estates affects inter vivos giving and capital gain realizations. The analysis will focus on the tradeoff between capital gains taxes and estate taxes. This tradeoff arises when an individual considers whether to sell an appreciated asset, and give the proceeds to children or other parties as inter vivos gifts, or alternatively to hold the asset until death, when it will be included in a potentially taxable estate but receive basis step-up. The central empirical focus of this project will be on the estimation of models for inter vivos giving, using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. The hypothesis to be tested is that households with the most to gain by holding assets until they die are particularly unlikely to make inter vivos gifts. The empirical results will provide evidence on the degree to which capital gains tax rules and estate taxes induce asset "lock in" among high net worth households with appreciated capital assets.The second subproject will develop new evidence, also based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, on the probability of realizing accrued capital gains in a given time interval. This information will be used to explore how a change in asset values, such as the increase in corporate stock prices during the 1 990s, might affect realizations and capital gains tax revenues. It will also be used to develop new estimates of the effective accrual tax rate on realized capital gains. Existing estimates of this effective tax rate rely on aggregate data, rather than householdlevel information, and are based on dated information about asset realization rates.The third subproject will explore the effect of pass-through taxation of realized capital gains on the behavior of mutual fund investors. It will study the impact of a mutual fund's "tax efficiency" on the cash inflows to the fund, thereby generalizing previous studies that have analyzed how pretax returns affect cash inflows. It will also consider the factors that determine the tax efficiency of different mutual funds, and the impact of mutual fund distributions on federal tax receipts. More generally, this study will provide new evidence on whether investors consider the tax burdens on different investment options in making portfolio choices.