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The taxation of bequests has long been and still is subject to intensive discussions in many industrialized countries. Triggered by these discussions, Verena Kley analyzes the taxation of bequests from economic perspectives, focusing on wealth transfers of very rich individuals. Given empirical findings, bequests of these individuals generate almost the entire revenues from wealth transfer taxation. Due to this, their specific preferences prove to be decisive for the optimal taxation of bequests. The author analyzes normative as well as positive implications for optimal wealth transfer taxation, accounting for a 'capitalist spirit' - traditionally associated with the upper tail of the wealth distribution

Abstract
In the present paper, we propose death benefits be directly embedded in retirement products to promote their attractiveness, where annuities and tontines are used as representative retirement products. As we assume that the death benefits will be passed on to the heirs of policyholders, these benefits can be considered as bequests. We find that both from the policyholders' and insurers' perspective, embedding bequests directly in the retirement products can increase the attractiveness of the retirement products and promote their sale. From the insurers' perspective, without including death benefits, the insurers play purely an administrative role in a tontine product, while adding the bequest benefits makes the tontines real insurance products and incentivizes the insurers to actively provide these innovative retirement products. Further, adding the bequest benefits upon the death of the policyholder, some natural hedging is incorporated in the survival payments, which reduces the solvency capital the insurers are required to set aside.

We present and test the idea that bequest planning is linked with the experience of inheriting. We consider "a family tradition of bequeathing" as a channel through which the intention to bequeath is moulded by and is positively correlated with the experience of inheriting. Using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we find that the experience of inheriting enhances the intention to bequeath, independently of the positive impact of wealth. We also find that the expectation of inheriting has a positive impact on the intention to bequeath, controlling for the expected increase in wealth on account of future inheritances.

We present and test the idea that bequest planning is linked with the experience of inheriting. We consider 'a family tradition of bequeathing' as a channel through which the intention to bequeath is moulded by and is positively correlated with the experience of inheriting. Using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we find that the experience of inheriting enhances the intention to bequeath, independently of the positive impact of wealth. We also find that the expectation of inheriting has a positive impact on the intention to bequeath, controlling for the expected increase in wealth on account of future inheritances.