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. This amounts to over half of those who would have been eligible to pay the tax. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that our results are driven by misreporting, our results imply that over the very short run, the death rate may be highly elastic with respect to the inheritance tax rate.
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Joshua S. Gans & Andrew Leigh, 2006.
"The Millennium Bub,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
531, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Joshua S. Gans & Andrew Leigh, 2006.
"The Millennium Bub,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
531, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
[Downloadable!]