The tax advantages of life insurance policies

Abstract

This paper carries out an analysis of individual profitability of life insurance in form of endowment policies which have been very popular in Germany for several decades. We integrate taxes, transaction costs and the possibility of early termination into a model of capital budgeting. The aim of this paper is to model the benefits of endowment policies as a form of saving. In a first step a riskless world with full foresight and a therefore deterministic investment horizon is assumed. After this, the occurrence of a random liquidity need and thus a stochastic investment horizon is analyzed. We discuss different benchmarks and decision criteria to reflect the individual advantages of the endowment insurance as well as the extent of their special tax treatment compared to alternative investments.Vorteilhaftigkeitsanalyse für Kapitallebensversicherungen; stochastischer Anlagehorizont; steuerliche Sonderbehandlung