OECD 자료를 활용한 상속세가 민간투자와 경제성장률에 미치는 영향 분석

The inheritance tax was introduced to reduce polarization by preventing the passing down of wealth and increasing the mobility between generations. However, there is a critic that the social cost of inheritance tax is not ignorable in terms of efficiency. Many OECD countries are lowering or abolishing inheritance taxes. The tax burden from Korea’s high inheritance tax rate can ultimately affect the overall economy because it can change the behavior of an individual and corporates’ decision-making process. We analyzed the impact of the share of inheritance tax revenues to GDP on economic growth and the growth rate of private investment using data over 50 years. We limited research subject to OECD countries because we could collect detailed data on inheritance tax, economic growth and investment for these countries. According to the results, the higher the proportion of inheritance tax to GDP, the lower the GDP growth rate, and lower the growth rate of the private investment. The results show that the inheritance tax had a negative effect on the economy as a whole, even though the fixed effect was taken into account. These results appear to support the recent tendency of OECD countries to reduce and abolish inheritance tax. It might be that the direction of reducing inheritance tax in the long term is desirable and that is also beneficial to the national economy.