IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/halshs-01885430.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wealth transfer taxation. Philosophical and economic debates and lessons from history

Author

Listed:
  • André Masson

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

For economists, it is not easy to grapple with a phenomenon as complex as inheritance or wealth transfers, which is inherently multidisciplinary. They are thus puzzled by the specific decline of wealth transfer taxation, which has become highly unpopular today, but also by the current lack of interest in the very issue of inheritance, which was formerly the subject of passionate debate among the most illustrious thinkers and social reformers. These changes appear all the more surprising in the light of the massive and worrying process of property accumulation (patrimonialization) that our societies have been experiencing since 1980, a process that is detrimental not only to economic growth, but also to equality of opportunity and to balanced intergenerational relationships. To explain such a paradox, I have extracted three polar "philosophies of inheritance" from the tangle of the arguments either in favor of or opposed to wealth transfer taxation, showing that only coalitions between holders of these different philosophies had proved historically effective at creating sustainable policies and attitudes towards inheritance and its taxation. The dominant coalition since 1980, between rich neoliberals and "familialists," explains the current rejection of the inheritance tax. I consider ways and means for wealth transfer tax reforms that would oust this coalition it in favor of a broader, more balanced one that would also simultaneously address the negative effects of the current wealth situation.

Suggested Citation

  • André Masson, 2018. "Wealth transfer taxation. Philosophical and economic debates and lessons from history," Post-Print halshs-01885430, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01885430
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01885430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.