The economic analysis of the taxes on wealth and whealth transfer

Wealth is the economic value of all assets that a natural entity or a legal entity owns at a certain time. People own wealth for several reasons such as consuming in future instead of today, taking precautions against some risks like an illness (that can be faced) or elderliness in future and leaving a legacy to his/her relatives. The taxes which deal with people's wealth are called wealth taxes. As it can be observed in the definition, this is a group of taxes rather than a single tax. These taxes have different names according to the content, sustainability or rate of the tax such as ordinary-extraordinary taxes, continous- ad-hoc taxes and general-private taxes. The history of wealth taxes is nearly as old as the history of humanity. These taxes have been implemented nearly in all countries in which private wealth is formed from past to present. However, these taxes have been changed during the time. For example; wealth taxes were funtamental taxes which constituted most part of the public revenues in the past while they have lost their importance and started to constitute a smaller part in the public revenues today. Although these taxes have lost their importance in public revenues, they still take part in the tax system. This means that these taxes are used with social and economic purposes instead of fiscal purposes. The development of wealth taxes in Turkey has been showing similarities with the developments in the other world countries. Since the era of the Ottoman Empire, wealth taxes have been implemented with different names and different characteristics. Today in Turkey, wealth is taxed with wealth taxes named as motor vehicles taxes and property taxes and transfer of wealth is taxed with inharitance and transfer tax. In this thesis, namely "The Economic Analysis of Wealth Taxes and Taxes on Transfer of Wealth" first, the concept of wealth and wealth taxes is analysed, then the economic effects and historical development of wealth taxes and Turkish experience are analysed. Keywords: Wealth Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Motor Vheicles Tax, İnheritance Tax.