How should heavy-duty trucks be taxed?

This paper develops and implements an analytical framework for estimating optimal taxes on the fuel use and mileage of heavy-duty trucks in the United States, accounting for external costs from congestion, accidents, pavement damage, noise, energy security, and local and global pollution. The analysis allows for endogenous fuel economy, increased auto travel in response to reduced truck congestion, and distinguishes driving by truck type and region. We estimate the optimal (second-best) diesel fuel tax at $1.12 per gallon and implementing it increases welfare by $1.34 billion per annum. Optimizing over both fuel and mileage taxes, and differentiating mileage taxes by vehicle type and region, yields progressively higher welfare gains. The most efficient tax structure involves a diesel fuel tax of 69 cents per gallon and charges on trucks that vary between 7 and 33 cents per mile; implementing this tax structure yields estimated welfare gains of $2.06 billion.     

Tax policy and returns to education

This paper considers how asymmetric tax treatment, where labour market earnings are taxed but household production is untaxed, affects educational choice and labour supply. We show that taxes on labour market earnings can generate a large (non-marginal) switch to home production and the ensuing deadweight losses are large. Using a cross-country panel, we find that gender differences in labour supply responses to tax policy can explain differences in aggregate labour supply and years of education across countries.     

The effect of property taxes on vacation home growth rates: Evidence from Michigan

The Tiebout model assumes that individuals sort to the jurisdiction which best matches their fiscal preferences. However, there is a paucity of reliable estimates for the impact of tax changes on household mobility. We utilize a state mandated school finance reform and temporal differences in vacation home densities to provide a unique test of this fundamental Tiebout assumption. The results show that changes in property taxes explain a significant amount of the variation in vacation home growth; a 3–4 mil decrease in property tax rates is associated with an increase of approximately one vacation home per square kilometer.     

Environmental taxes,reforms and economic growth: an empirical analysis of panel data

This paper explores the relationship between environmentally related taxes and the economic growth rate. The analysis also investigates whether this relationship differs between countries that have implemented environmental tax reforms (ETRs) and those that have not. Using panel data from 31 OECD countries over the period 1994–2013, the paper finds that when we allow environmentally related tax revenues to interact with an initial level of real GDP per capita, the overall revenues of these taxes are negatively associated with the economic growth rate in the short and long term. Furthermore, we show that the higher the initial level of GDP per capita, the more environmentally related tax revenues can promote the economic growth rate. The analysis also reveals that the relationship between environmentally related tax revenues and economic growth varies between countries that have a mechanism to redistribute environmentally related tax revenues and those that do not.     

直击北京车展 2012北京国际汽车展览会商用车板块特别报道

备受社会各界关注的北京车展于4月23日正式掀开了其神秘的面纱。在本刊着重关注的商用车及润滑油板块,包括沃尔沃、奔驰、广汽日野、佩卡、福田、东风商用车、江淮、南京依维柯、大运重卡、美孚在内的多家厂商在车展现场展示了其最新产品。在本刊记者历时两天的媒     

基于射频技术的商用货车燃油防盗防漏预警系统微探

因商用货车的使用环境较为复杂,使得物流运输阶段的商用货车常常反映出燃油非正常流失的情况,面对这类问题,必须要采取合理化的应对方案,确保商用货车燃油得以保护。论文重点结合射频技术,分析商用货车燃油防盗防漏预警系统的应用,概述其基本的应用优势和思路,确保商用货车运输阶段更加的安全。     

Transaction taxes, greed and risk aversion in an agent-based financial market model

Recent agent-based financial market models came to the result that taxing financial transactions does not per se increase financial stability and that the response of volatility and misalignments to rising tax rates seem to be u-shaped. Moreover, greed and the risk appetite of traders are often blamed for financial instability and there is no evidence how greed and risk aversion affect the effectiveness of regulations in financial markets. We aim to add to this gap in the literature by analyzing how the effectiveness of transaction taxes depend on different behavioral patterns within an agent-based framework. Our simulations indicate that a tax rate of 0.1% demarcates the stabilizing tax regime from the destabilizing one. We figure out that transaction taxes are less effective, either when chartists trade more aggressively, fundamentalists trade less aggressively, agents switch more frequently between trading strategies or only have short memory in their fitness measures. Lower risk aversion of agents, however, makes higher tax rates more effective as indicated by a flatter volatility response curve. We conclude that additional regulations should concentrate on the traders’ responsibilities for their risk-exposure.     

Transaction costs, capital-gains taxes, and housing demand

The paper considers the effect of transaction costs—particularly in the form of capital-gains taxes—on the aggregate demand for owner-occupied housing. The framework is an overlapping-generations model, where consumers can avoid the transaction costs (taxes) by keeping the same house for both periods of life. The first part of the paper analyzes the consumer's choice problem. It distinguishes between costs that are fixed irrespective of the size of the house bought or sold, and costs such as capital-gains taxes that are related to the house value. It is shown that higher transaction costs have lock-in effects, inducing consumers to keep the same house for both periods. Also it is found that under a wide variety of circumstances the amount of housing demanded will increase as the household is being locked in. Finally, the paper looks at the effects on aggregate demand from an increase in capital-gains taxes. It is shown that an increased rate of taxation decreases demand for low tax rates. But for high tax rates, when lock-in effects become important, one generally gets the opposite effect; high tax rates tend to increase housing demand.     

An empirical analysis of effects of gasoline price change on transportation behavior in Japan,with consideration of regional differences

This empirically analyzes the effect of gasoline price change on various aspects of surface transport behavior comprehensively, with consideration of regional differences as to whether or not the region includes a major metropolitan agglomeration area (hereafter, “megalopolis”), by means of carefully arranging yearly time-series data from fiscal 1987 to fiscal 2008 in Japan. The aim is to look at common as well as different effects among regions and to draw policy implications relating to fuel price, as well as to fuel tax, towards developing a low-carbon transport system, which are applicable to other countries including emerging countries where a demographic disparity between megalopolis areas and rural areas might be increasing. The methodology includes the multiple regression models complemented by the 1st order auto-regressive models of error terms, where the elasticities of gasoline price and those of income regarding usage of personal automobiles, of public transport and of passenger railways with or without periodic tickets, and fuel consumption on cars, as well as ownership of various types of cars, are estimated for individual gross-regions. In both gross-regions, higher gasoline prices are commonly shown to be related to lower ownership of larger private passenger cars, higher ownership of light cars, lower ownership of the total private passenger cars, lower passenger-km per capita in cars, lower fuel consumption on cars and higher transit ridership. The result suggests general automobile-fuel-price policy implications, the extent of which is differentiated by spatial characteristics, and estimates the adverse effect of the possible abolition of the provisional gasoline tax rate on the emissions in both gross-regions. The application of result is also tried in exploring effect of other policy measures such as expressway tolls.     

General equilibrium and optimal taxes

It is shown that if subsidies are not excessive, there exists a general competitive equilibrium in the presence of a complex tax structure. Furthermore, under certain continuity assumptions, a tax structure which is optimal from the social point of view can be determined. Procedures maximize quasi-concave after tax profit functions. Consumers have convex budget sets reflect- ing their income from sales and profits minus taxes on fixed income and progressive sales taxes. Their preferences are interdependent, intransitive and incomplete. The government provides public goods and determines the optimal tax regime on the basis of its preferences on the final competitive consumption allocation.     

HOW SHOULD CAPITAL BE TAXED?

This survey discusses how capital should be taxed in advanced economies. We review the theoretical optimal tax literature, survey empirical studies on the distribution of capital and the distortionary costs of capital taxation, and analyze the desirability of specific taxes on capital income, wealth, property, inheritances, and corporate profits. Our overall conclusion is that capital taxation plays an important role in an optimal tax system, but only certain ways of taxing capital are able to strike a balance between optimality and administrative feasibility.     

我国矿产资源税费征收现状及存在的问题

我国矿产资源行业存在着国家财产权利没有得到充分体现和矿山企业税费负担过重的双重问题,严重制约了矿业经济的可持续发展。文章借鉴国外矿产资源税费制度,提出要建立科学的矿产资源税费制度,以完善矿产资源税费理论。     

630E卡车举升限位的并联改造

美国GE公司为小松德莱赛公司生产的电动自卸卡车630E卡车由于长时间满负荷运行,大斗销基孔、主销轴等都已发生过度磨损及变形现象,这样造成卡车大斗在使用过程中,由于车斗货物装载不平衡而发生前后、左右的位移串动,造成举升限位开关的间隙不受控制失效,极容易造成举升缸拔缸事故。发生拔缸后,有时还会砸坏设备上的电器元件,发动机等。本文针对上述问题,对630E卡车举升限位进行技术改造。经过改造后的卡车试验运行良好,改造后没有出现拔缸问题。目前本改造方法已在630E卡车上广泛普及,使用性能良好。     

The winners and losers of tax reform: An assessment under financial integration

I quantify the macroeconomic and redistributive effects of the unilateral elimination of the capital income tax in a two-country, heterogeneous-agent incomplete markets model with progressive labor income taxes. Home, by implementing the reform, induces government responses where labor income is taxed in Home and mostly subsidized in Foreign. In addition, post-reform price dynamics reduce Home’s wealth and suppress households’ ability to do consumption smoothing, with negative effects on the majority—particularly on the poor. In turn, Foreign accumulates wealth, and price movements work particularly in favor of the poor. As a result, a large majority in Home prefers the status quo whereas Foreign supports the reform unanimously. These findings are robust to alternative scenarios where (i) the borrowing constraints are relaxed, (ii) both countries jointly eliminate capital income taxes, (iii) foreign interest income is taxed, and (iv) Home capital income tax is reduced from 40% to 35%.     

Carbon taxes and the double dividend hypothesis in a recursive-dynamic CGE model for Spain

A carbon tax is potentially a policy that can reduce CO₂ emissions and mitigate climate risks, at lowest economy-wide costs. We develop a dynamic CGE model for Spain to assess the economic and environmental effects of a carbon tax, and test the double dividend (DD) hypothesis. We simulate the impact of three carbon taxes: €10, €20 and €30 per ton of CO₂. For each tax, four ‘revenue recycling’ scenarios are examined: a reduction of taxes on capital, on labor, on value-added tax, and a scenario in which revenues are not recycled. We find a DD for taxes of €10/ton and lower, within five to seven years of implementation. We estimate an annual CO₂ emissions reduction of around 10% with this tax. Under some circumstances, the DD can be achieved for a tax of €20/ton. In any case, recycling revenues to cut pre-existing taxes reduces costs of imposing carbon taxes.     

The Kornai effect with partial bailouts and taxes

The model examines Kornai's observation that in the presence of bailouts, firms' demand for inputs will be greater than would otherwise be the case. This conjecture is examined in a model in which both revenue and cost uncertainty are present and in which firms making losses are partially subsidized and firms making positive profits are partially taxed. The Kornai effect is more prevalent the greater the subsidy rate, the smaller the tax rate and the greater the variance of the random variables through which uncertainty manifests itself. In the case of strongly positively correlated cost and revenue uncertainty, the absolute incidence of the Kornai effect is small.     

Coordination of capital taxation among asymmetric countries

This paper studies international fiscal coordination in a world of integrated markets and sovereign national governments. Mobile capital and immobile labor are taxed in order to finance a fixed budget. This generates productive inefficiency. Two fiscal reforms are considered: a minimum capital tax level and a tax range, i.e., a minimum plus a maximum capital tax level. It is shown that the introduction of a lower bound to the capital tax level is never preferred to fiscal competition by all countries while there always exists a combination of both a lower and an upper bound (i.e., a tax range) which is unanimously accepted.     

Local taxation and the consequences of revenue distribution patterns

The economy of a small region. is modeled as an eighteen-equation system describing production, consumption, income distribution, factor supply, and a government sector. The government uses: independent taxes on land rents and capital rentals to collect revenue equal to 20% of what land rents would be in an untaxed equilibrium and distributes the revenue to local residents in four different patterns. The distribution of the tax revenue, as well as the mobility of the factor taxed, generates distinct patterns of impacts on regional population, capital stock and production structure wages rents and the incidence of the taxes.     

Are PILOTs property taxes for nonprofits?

Nonprofit charitable organizations are exempt from most taxes, including local property taxes, but U.S. cities and towns increasingly request that nonprofits make payments in lieu of taxes (known as PILOTs). Strictly speaking, PILOTs are voluntary, though nonprofits may feel pressure to make them, particularly in high-tax communities. Evidence from Massachusetts indicates that PILOT rates, measured as ratios of payments to the value of local tax-exempt property, are higher in towns with higher property tax rates: a one percentage point higher property tax rate is associated with a 0.2 percentage point higher PILOT rate. PILOTs appear to discourage nonprofit activity: a one percentage point higher PILOT rate is associated with 0.8% lower real property ownership by local nonprofits, 0.2% lower total assets, and 0.2% lower revenues of local nonprofits. These patterns are consistent with voluntary PILOTs acting in a manner similar to low-rate, compulsory real estate taxes.     

Payroll taxes,wages and employment: Identification through policy changes

This paper investigates the effect of changes in payroll taxes on wages and employment in Argentina. The analysis, based on administrative data, focuses on the impact of a series of major changes in payroll taxes which varied across geographical areas. This setup offers two main advantages over previous studies. First, using longitudinal data, the variation in tax rates across space and time provides a plausible source of identification of their effects on employment and wages. Second, the use of legal tax rates for each area at each point in time provides a remedy for the measurement error bias raised by the use of empirical rates constructed from observed tax and wage bills. Once this bias is accounted for, the results indicate that changes in payroll tax rates are only partially shifted onto wages, and they point to the absence of any significant effect on employment.