Bequest taxes, donations, and house pricesGiorgio Bellettini, Filippo Taddei and Giulio Zanella The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, 2013, vol. 13, issue 1, 355-379 Abstract: This paper is an empirical investigation into the effect of bequest taxes (estate or inheritance tax, in the US) and inter vivos real estate donations taxes (gift tax, in the US) on (i) house prices, (ii) house donations, and (iii) market transactions. In a simple model with intergenerational altruism, a lower tax rate unambiguously increases (i) and has an ambiguous effect on (ii) and (iii). We test these predictions using an original and unique data set containing information on sales, donations and real estate prices in 13 large Italian cities between 1993 and 2004. This period spans a major reform that first decreased and then abolished the inter vivos real estate donations tax and bequest tax in Italy. We find that the reform is associated with cumulative real appreciation of about 5% between 2001 and 2004, an increase in donations, and a decrease in market transactions over the same period. Keywords: bequests, donations, estate tax, gift tax, house prices, inheritance tax, JEL codes: E60; E65; H24 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:25:n:10 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics is currently edited by Arpad Abraham and Tiago Cavalcanti More articles in The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics from De Gruyter |
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