The focus of the book is on chapters 11, 12, and 13 of the Internal Revenue Code. Discusses selected income tax issues, but only in contrast with, or as an adjunct to, a discussion of the estate and gift tax treatment of those issues. This book is not an estate planning book or a comprehensive guide to the federal tax implications of all gratuitous transfers. Contains sections on deductions and credits and on the generation skipping transfer.

Although estate and gift taxes raise a small fraction of federal revenues, they have become sources of increasing political controversy. This book is designed to inform the current policy debate and build a conceptual basis for future scholarship. The book contains eleven original studies of estate and gift taxes, along with discussants' comments. The essays provide background and historical information; analyze the optimal taxation of estates and gifts; examine the effects of the tax on charitable contributions, saving behavior, the distribution and level of wealth, tax avoidance and tax evasion; and explore the effects of alternatives to estate taxation.

This treatise contains a comprehensive discussion of the estate and gift tax provisions of the IRC. Practical problems of estate and gift tax planning are analyzed in depth. Gift tax deductions and credits against estate taxes are examined in the work.