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Timing of death and the repeal of the Swedish inheritance tax

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Author Info

  • Eliason, Marcus

    () (Institute of Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU))

  • Ohlsson, Henry

    () (Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies)

Abstract

Does taxation affect the timing of death? This is an interesting example of how behavior might be affected by economic incentives. We study how two changes in Swedish inheritance taxation 2003/04 and 2004/05 have affected mortality during the turns of the years. Our first main result is that deceased with estates taxable for legal heirs were 10 percentage points more likely to have died on New Year’s Day 2005, from when the inheritance tax was repealed, rather than on New Year’s Eve 2004, compared to deceased without taxable estates for legal heirs. The second main result is that deceased with estates taxable for a married spouse were 12 percentage points more likely to have died on New Year’s Day 2004, from when the inheritance tax between spouses was repealed, rather than on New Year’s Eve 2003, compared to deceased without taxable estates for a married spouse.

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File URL: http://www.nek.uu.se/Pdf/wp2010_2.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Uppsala University, Department of Economics in its series Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies with number 2010:2.

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Length: 29 pages
Date of creation: 26 Mar 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:uufswp:2010_002

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Department of Economics, Uppsala University, P. O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Phone: + 46 18 471 25 00
Fax: + 46 18 471 14 78
Email:
Web page: http://www.nek.uu.se/
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Related research

Keywords: behavioral response to taxes; timing of death; estate tax; inheritance tax; tax avoidance; mortality;

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References

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  1. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joel Slemrod, 2003. "Dying to Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate-Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 256-265, May.
  2. Joshua S. Gans & Andrew Leigh, 2006. "The Millennium Bub," CEPR Discussion Papers 531, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
  3. Miccinesi, Guido & Fischer, Susanne & Paci, Eugenio & Onwuteaka-Philipsen, Bregje D & Cartwright, Colleen & van der Heide, Agnes & Nilstun, Tore & Norup, Michael & Mortier, Freddy, 2005. "Physicians' attitudes towards end-of-life decisions: a comparison between seven countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(9), pages 1961-1974, May.
  4. Joshua S. Gans & Andrew Leigh, 2006. "Did the Death of Australian Inheritance Taxes Affect Deaths?," CEPR Discussion Papers 530, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
  5. Eliason, Marcus & Ohlsson, Henry, 2008. "Living to save taxes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 340-343, September.
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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Timing death with tax changes
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2010-05-06 14:06:00
  2. Now thatâ??s a tax review
    by Joshua Gans in Core Economics on 2010-05-05 19:46:13
  3. Dood en belastingen
    by Marco in eco.nomie.nl on 2010-06-02 15:43:04

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