Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The Holding Period Distinction of the Capital Gains Tax

Contents:

Author Info

  • Steven Kaplan

Abstract

United States tax law distinguishes between short-term and long-term capital gains. By taxing long-term gains at a lower rate the law creates an incentive for investors to postpone the realization of short-term gains. This study examines the lock-in effect induced by the differential tax treatment of long- and short-term gains. Analysis of data on corporate stock transactions from 1973 suggests that the lock-in effect is large and, thus, causes investors to alter their investment portfolios. The existence of such an effect is inefficient and results in a reduction in capital market efficiency. The inefficiency might be justified if there were convincing reasons which supported the existence of the holding period distinction. It is commonly argued, for instance, that eliminating the distinction would encourage short-term speculation at the expense of long-term commitment to capital. It is also claimed that this would result in a loss of revenue to the government. This study relies on IRS data and simulations using the NBER-TAXSIM file to examine the validity of these arguments. The results of this study suggest that the holding period distinction is not very effective in deterring speculation and does not increase government revenues; in fact, it may decrease them.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0762.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 0762.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Sep 1981
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0762

Note: PE
Contact details of provider:
Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Email:
Web page: http://www.nber.org
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. James M. Poterba, 1988. "How Burdensome are Capital Gains Taxes?," NBER Working Papers 1871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0762

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

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.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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