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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of inheritance tax behavior with normative value principles and factors found relevant for income tax compliance. Also, it examines the influence of affectedness and earmarking on inheritance tax compliance. Furthermore, it compares two countries similar in tax morale, tax culture as well as dominant normative value principles, Austria and Germany, of which one – Germany – levies inheritance taxes and the other – Austria – is debating its reintroduction.

A two (affected vs nonaffected) by two (Austria vs Germany) by two (inheritance tax vs stock profit tax) by three (no earmarking vs social justice earmarking vs equality of opportunity earmarking) experimental online questionnaire was conducted with 296 Austrians and 230 Germans.

Normative value principles and other socio-psychological variables play an important role concerning inheritance tax behavior. Affectedness does not influence inheritance tax compliance. Earmarking inheritance tax to projects corresponding to these value principles increases inheritance tax compliance in the Austrian sample and could represent a measure to increase inheritance tax compliance in countries implementing inheritance tax or increasing inheritance tax.

This study draws a comprehensive picture of the socio-psychological variables relevant to inheritance tax behavior and tests the effect of earmarking as a policy measure to increase inheritance tax compliance.

This paper aims to propose a tax reform that would reduce income taxes and other indirect taxes while at the same time increasing inheritance and estate taxes. Such a reform is economically very efficient and would certainly equalize income distribution.

A wide review of the death and inheritance taxes in the USA and Europe is presented.

Government's revenue from inheritance and gifts is lower than 1 percent of GDP. This is due mainly to a combination of considerable tax‐free allowances for the closest relatives and high thresholds where the top rates apply. No empirical examination of the effect of inheritance tax on economic growth or economic efficiency could be found.

Because inheritance taxes are economically efficient, they improve the immoral unequal income distribution drastically. Therefore, it should be concluded that inheritance tax must be implemented.

This paper discusses the various economic aspects of the proposed tax reform.

Wicksell's contributions to welfare economics are viewed as largely aligned with Pareto efficiency and James Buchanan's work in public choice. This conflicts with the Scandinavian representation of Wicksell as the forefather of the modern Swedish socialist economy. The purpose of this paper is to examine Wicksell's approach to economics, particularly his understanding of “justice” as a way to understanding the evolution of two such divergent traditions.

Original academic and popular press writings, as well as archival materials, are used to examine Wicksell's economic philosophy and his position on key aspects of welfare economics, including the relative importance of allocation versus distribution in policy decision making. His influence on the American public choice tradition and Swedish welfare economics is examined.

Both the public choice and Swedish welfare traditions based on Wicksell's justice represent overly simplistic interpretations and fail to explain how Wicksell could have such a significant impact on the development of two such divergent approaches to public economics.

Wicksell's strong association with Pareto efficiency and the public choice school is unfortunate because de‐emphasizes the importance Wicksell placed on distributional considerations and overly simplifies his use of the term “justice.” Similarly, the Swedish economists failed to appreciate efficiency arguments and chose instead to emphasize Wicksell's distributional concerns. This paper sheds light on where the misapprehension arose and how it can be better understood.

It is well known that taxes on the transfer of wealth typically raise very little revenue. However, this does not mean that they are ineffective as tools for redistribution. In this chapter, we show how important such taxes can be in the long-run distribution of wealth, reducing equilibrium inequality (the “predistribution” effect) by a much larger amount than what is apparent in terms of the immediate impact of the tax (the “redistribution” effect).

This is the second set of lecture notes from courses in public finance published in an archival volume in this series. Volume 19-C (2001) was entirely devoted to notes from lectures by E. R. A. Seligman at Columbia University. Two differences mark Seligman’s lectures and the lectures by Henry C. Simons at Chicago, as reported below. Seligman seems to have been lecturing primarily to students in tax administration, hence he presented very little economic theory; whereas Simons was lecturing to graduate students in economics, and presented relatively more theory. Seligman did not refrain from some passing of judgment but his lectures were largely descriptive and non-judgmental; whereas Simons has no hesitation in presenting his own normative approach on various issues. These issues tended strongly to focus on inequality, tax justice, and progressivity.

What are the reasons for writing this paper? The purpose of this paper is to make the case for liberty, and free enterprise, against the criticisms of this system. Specifically, the present essay is an attempt to criticize the case for inheritance taxation. This is made by many, but the author focuses on James Buchanan's contribution to this support for socialism. The author does so because James Buchanan is widely known as a champion of capitalism and free markets, and he is nothing of the sort, at least in this one case.

The approach used in this paper is to quote widely from the adherents of inheritance taxes, and then to show the flaws in the cases they offer in support of this system.

The finding is that none of the arguments offered on behalf of inheritance taxation have been shown to be valid. There are flaws in all of them. This, of course, does not imply no such arguments can be shown to be successful; only that the ones herein cited do not justify this market interference.

Why do entrepreneurs engage in entrepreneurship? For a whole host of reasons, surely; these might in the extreme be as different as there are different entrepreneurs. But one motivation, certainly an important one, likely to be felt by most entrepreneurs, is to leave a bequest upon demise, so that one's heirs and loved ones may share in the fruits of one's entrepreneurial activities. Thus, taxes on inheritances, let alone those approaching the 100 percent level, must be anathema to at least most if not all entrepreneurial activities. The present paper makes the case against such attacks on wealth, bequests, inheritances.

To the best of the author's knowledge, although there are of course defenses of bequests, and critiques of Buchanan on other matters, there are no criticisms of this Nobel prize winning economist on this particular issue.

The authors analyse how the receipt of a wealth transfer (inheritance or gift) affects labour force participation in 14 EU countries. They compare the effect of receiving an inheritance or a gift and investigate different behaviours at the gender level and educational level and for elderly individuals.

The authors use data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey for 14 European countries and adopt an instrumental variable approach. They use information on the type of donor (family and nonfamily) to infer the degree of anticipation of a wealth transfer.

The authors find that unexpected wealth transfers have a negative impact on labour force participation, with a stronger impact for gifts than for inheritances. For gender, they find larger negative impacts for females than for males, which is in line with a weaker attachment to the labour market. Receiving an unexpected wealth transfer may also result in early retirement.

The paper offers a novel comparison of the effect of receiving an inheritance or a gift on labour force participation using a unique European dataset. The authors investigate whether males and females react differently to the receipt of a wealth transfer and the existence of different responses at the educational level and for elderly individuals.

This paper aims to collect evidence on the issues and challenges in cryptocurrency estate planning and the possible approaches or methods to address them. Then, this paper also aims to understand Malaysia’s situation compared to global situations and determine how the country could address those challenges.

This study adapted a standard systematic review protocol named preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, guided by three research questions: what are the challenges of cryptocurrency estate planning, how do researchers and practitioners address the issues or challenges and how could Malaysians move towards sustainable cryptocurrency estate planning? Relevant documents reported on cryptocurrency estate planning were analysed using thematic analysis.

The results of this review suggested that the issues and challenges in cryptocurrency estate planning can be described from six aspects: awareness, financial aspects, law, process, security and taxation. On the other hand, the approaches or methods to address these challenges may be categorised into laws, processes and technology. Further, a framework for cryptocurrency estate planning in Malaysia is proposed as an initial step towards a sustainable economy and society in Malaysia.

The state and the use of cryptocurrency are still considered new in most countries globally. Hence, people are yet to be aware of the issues that may arise from it. Nevertheless, cryptocurrency estate planning will soon become an area of interest in which this study could enhance the literature and contribute knowledge to understanding the situation.

This study collected evidence on the issues and the approaches to address cryptocurrency estate planning. This study then focused on the Malaysian perspective by proposing a framework that was not covered by existing studies.

The aim of this paper is to examine the inter-generational transfer by not only looking at the monetary transfer as discussed by many economists and sociologists but also by advancing the conceptual discussion and illustrating it with some examples of empirical comparison.

This paper provides recent theoretical and empirical work on inter-generational transfer from the viewpoint of different systems and compares it to the Islamic view of inheritance.

One finding of this paper is that the Islamic inheritance system is a socially and economically more comprehensive and broad framework than inter-generational transfers from another system.

This paper is considered as an original approach to the framework of the Quranic basic source and Islamic literature regarding inter-generational transfer compared to another system.