Growth Consequences of Estate Tax Reform

The American Family Business Foundation has released Growth Consequences of Estate Tax Reform: Impacts on Small and Family Businesses, by Douglas Holtz-Eakin & Cameron T. Smith (both of the American Action Forum):

This paper examines the impacts of a higher estate tax rate on asset accumulation, small and family businesses’ cost of capital, investment outlays, desire to hire, size of payrolls and jobs. In each instance, raising the estate tax has significant negative impacts. In particular, letting the tax rate rise to 60% will cost as much as 1.5 million jobs, and even a more modest rate of 15% could diminish hiring by over 350,000 jobs.

 
Other impacts on small and family businesses are shown below.

• Raising the “hurdle rate” of return required for investment by 34 basis points
• Reducing capital outlays by 7.8%
• Decreasing the probability of new hiring by 8.3%
• Cutting the size of payrolls by 2.5%