Estate taxes and business transfers across the globe: A configurational analysis

Estate taxes on business inheritance are regularly the subject of controversial debates in business, politics and economics. However, a holistic understanding and systematic analysis of what shapes cross-national differences in estate taxes is missing. Using data from 54 countries, we present a comprehensive configurational analysis of socio-economic determinants of estate taxes. We reveal six distinct configurations of country-level entrepreneurial activity, business ownership, wealth inequality as well as cultural orientation towards individualism and the long term, which explain the presence of high or low estate taxes, and theorize around the institutional principles upon which societies draw to justify these estate taxes. Our analysis also highlights the importance of treating low and high estate taxes as separate outcomes since, for example, a country’s entrepreneurial activity is less relevant than business ownership in configurations for high estate taxes, while the opposite is true for configurations for low estate taxes. Our study contributes a more nuanced understanding of the drivers of international variation in estate taxes and the particular role of entrepreneurs and business owners therein.