Should Continued Family Firms Face Lower Taxes than Other Estates?
Leibniz Universitat Hannover Discussion Paper No. 387
46 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2008 Last revised: 22 Feb 2009
There are 2 versions of this paper
Should Continued Family Firms Face Lower Taxes than Other Estates?
Should Continued Family Firms Face Lower Taxes than Other Estates?
Date Written: January 2009
Abstract
Inheritance taxes may induce heirs to discontinue family firms. Because firm dissolution incurs transaction costs, a preferential tax treatment of transferred family businesses seems to be desirable from a macroeconomic viewpoint. The support of dynastic succession, however, entails also a cost on the economy if firm continuation by less able heirs prevents entry into entrepreneurship. Here, we investigate analytically and quantitatively the trade-off between transaction costs saved and creative destruction prevented. We find that a unique general equilibrium exists at which, depending on the institutional setup, low-ability heirs either abandon (Type 1) or continue (Type 2) a family business. A calibration of the model with German data suggests that preferential tax treatment of family firms has severe negative consequences on macroeconomic performance if it causes a threshold crossing from Type 1 to Type 2 equilibrium. It also reveals that the targeted persons, i.e., the entrepreneurs that are caused to continue a business, always lose relative to their status in an economy without continuation-friendly tax policy.
Keywords: Bequest Taxation, Creative Destruction, Entrepreneurship, Family Firms, Preferential Tax Treatment
JEL Classification: H25, L26, J24
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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