THE FISCAL DIVIDEND MYTH OF AN INCOME/GST TAX SWITCH*

Reaping a windfall fiscal dividend from the taxation of the ‘underground’ economy's expenditures on ‘legitimate’ commodities is often seen as a significant advantage for a goods and services tax (GST) over an income tax. This claim ignores the changes in prices in the underground economy which would arise from the introduction of a GST. Employing a general equilibrium model which allows for tax evasion, we show that any ‘dividend’ arising from a change in the income tax/GST mix is equivalent to a rise in the income tax rate without a GST.     

我国开征生态维护建设税的初步研究

生态维护建设税是指国家为了加强生态的维护建设,扩大和稳定生态维护建设资金的来源而开征的一种税收。作为增值税、营业税、消费税、企业所得税的附加税种,生态维护建设税以备单位和个人实际缴纳的增值税、营业税、消费税、企业所得税的税额作为计征依据。它的开征可以为生态的维护和建设提供专门的、稳定的资金来源,实现全社会共同分享生态资源,共同承担生态环境的维护和建设成本,对建设社会主义生态文明具有深远的意义。     

The Neutrality of the Resource Rent Tax

Although less distorting than conventional royalties and income tax, the resource rent tax is strictly neutral only if the interest rate at which losses are carried forward relates correctly to the discount rate employed by investors in project evaluation. Thus it is possible in principle to design a resource rent tax that is strictly neutral only if parameters are set independently for each minerals investment. Such attempts to tailor parameters to each investment would make great demands on information and would increase business uncertainty. The paper suggests expedients to reduce the costs of non-neutrality when resource rent tax is applied with parameters that are of general application and discusses their use in Australia.     

长期股权投资收益的税收征管对策研究

由于中国现行税法与会计制度在投资收益的处理上存在差异,使得企业所得税的税收征管方面容易出现漏洞,造成税款流失。因此,投资收益的税收管理问题应引起税务机关的高度重视,应注重加强被投资企业与税务机关的信息沟通,加强税法宣传,堵塞税收征管漏洞,强化对长期股权投资收益的税收管理。     

A note on the neutrality of the cash flow corporation tax

The cash flow tax has been widely recommended as a form of taxing corporate income which is neutral with respect to investment decisions. This note points out that the claim is valid only under the assumption that the tax rate is constant over time. By contrast, an ‘ideal’ profits tax is neutral whatever the time shape of the tax rate.     

Generalised R-based and S-based taxes under uncertainty

This paper considers the relationship between two general neutral business tax structures, which we label the ‘firm tax’ and the ‘shareholder tax’. The well-known R-based and S-based cash flow taxes, analysed by Meade (1978), are special cases of these two taxes. We demonstrate the neutrality of both taxes in the presence of uncertainty, and characterise the tax rules required in the event of default and wind-up. Our analysis provides the first proof of the neutrality of the S-based cash flow tax and the Allowance for Corporate Equity (ACE) corporation tax under uncertainty. We also discuss implementation and tax avoidance issues.     

对加强企业所得税征管的若干思考

新企业所得税法颁布实施以来,根据现行企业所得税征管现状及以往征管经验,可以发现新企业所得税法在对企业所得税的征管中还存在所得税政策、所得税计征办法、所得税税源监控、避税与反避税以及执法责任等方面的不足。如能在完善和调整所得税的优惠政策、加强税源监管以减少税收流失等方面加以改进,将会提高企业所得税征管的质量和效率。     

Agency problems and unrelated business income of non-profit organizations: an empirical analysis

Nonprofit organizations are traditionally assumed to dislike commercial activities. In the USA, they are however allowed to engage in commercial activities, but the income they derive from these activities is then subject to the so-called ‘unrelated business income tax’. If NPOs do indeed dislike commercial income, then why do they engage in these activities? Using a data set of 2103 US NPOs, this study suggests that the presence of agency problems inside the organization can at least provide an explanation for the occurrence of ‘unrelated business income’.     

碳税对我国城镇居民收入分配的累退效应与碳补贴方案设计

本文以碳税的收入分配效应为研究对象,将碳税的收入分配效应分解为直接效应与间接效应,采用《中国统计年鉴2011》、《中国城市统计年鉴2010》、《2007年投入产出表》相关数据,运用收入支出法、投入产出表原理测算了两种效应作用下的我国碳税累退性情况,进而在综合效应分析的基础上,模拟测算两种碳税补贴政策对累退性的纠正效应。测算结果表明,碳税的征收存在明显的累退性,其中,直接效应与间接效应对碳税累退性的贡献不同,直接效应贡献更大,可以解释大部分累退性。同时,按收入水平的有梯度的碳税补贴政策对纠正累退性效果更为显著。     

Professor Friedman,meet Lady Rhys-Williams: NIT vs. CIT

In the conventional view, income testing is required to make a tax-transfer program ‘efficient.’ This view can be seen to hinge on the ‘target efficiency’ concept. The economic efficiency of income testing is analyzed here-including distortions of household behavior and the total administrative costs of the tax-transfer system. The income-tested program is a negative income tax system (NIT), which has divergent marginal tax rates for beneficiaries and net taxpayers; the nontested scheme is a credit income tax (CIT), which makes universal payments and imposes a uniform marginal tax rate. Theoretical analysis shows the conditions under which the CIT is more efficient than a comparable NIT. Some suggestive empirical evidence and policy considerations in the choice between NIT and CIT are presented.     

A decomposition of the Harberger expression for tax incidence

In this paper we propose a decomposition of the Harberger expression for the incidence of the corporate income tax into ‘commodity price distortion’ and ‘factor price distortion’ effects. By applying Harberger's estimates of the parameters for the U.S. economy, we will demonstrate that the factor price distortion effect, which has an extremely simple formal expression, explains 115 percent of the total effect of the tax change on the rate of return. This suggests that the commodity price distortion effect may be relatively unimportant in explaining the tax incidence. The difference between our two effects and Mieszkowski's (1967) output and factor substitution effects is also noted.     

开征遗产税 调节中国居民收入差距

随着中国经济的发展，开征遗产赠与税对缩小居民收入差距具有现实意义。开征遗产税，应构建科学的遗产税嗣，遗产税实行专款专用，用于农村社会保障，同时应建立相应的配套措施，以保障其顺利实施。     

中国当前开征遗产税的必要性与可能性——以税收正义为视角

中国当前贫富差距日益扩大,需要建立有效的调控机制,抑制财富的不公平分配,个人所得税与消费税虽然具有调整社会财富分配的作用,但二者的税制模式限制了它们在税收正义上的效力,故有必要开征更具社会公平价值的遗产税,并且目前的经济发展水平、政治环境与道德水平以及法律环境为遗产税的开征提供了可能性。     

Tax treatment of owner occupied housing and wealth inequality

We construct a quantitative general equilibrium lifecycle model with housing tenure decisions to investigate the degree to which wealth inequality in the United States is affected by the preferential tax treatment of home-ownership. Favorable tax treatment of owner occupied housing in the form of home mortgage interest and property tax deductibility, and the untaxed nature of imputed rents, provides a financial incentive for home-ownership over renting as well as an incentive to “over-consume” housing since houses are not fungible. Since the favorable tax treatment of housing disproportionately creates tax savings for the upper quantiles of the income distribution, we quantify how it contributes to the heavily right skewed distribution of wealth in the United States using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. We consider a revenue-neutral government response to the counter factual experiments of removing the current tax structure on housing. Our quantitative analysis shows that, in terms of distributional effects, removing all of the preferential tax treatments results in an aggregate increase in welfare. However, we do not find any reduction in inequality. We also find that while some re-allocation toward financial assets occurs, households primarily increase their consumption when imputed housing rents are taxed and the property tax deduction is removed. Thus housing tax policy may be effective at encouraging more overall saving through housing assets.     

A comparative analysis of funding schemes for public infrastructure spending in Quebec

The economic literature has been investigating the positive relation between public infrastructure spending and the productivity of the private sector since Munnell (1992). We have introduced this relationship into a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Quebec economy to investigate various funding schemes to scale up infrastructure spending in the province. We draw our assumptions from Estache et al. (2010) combined with sectoral elasticity parameters. We conduct a comparative analysis where the funding comes from debt alone, and debt with sales tax, income tax and business tax. Our main finding is that the income tax seems to produce the most positive effects and the businesses tax the most negative effects, though differences are small.     

INCOME REDISTRIBUTION THROUGH THE TAX SYSTEM: A SIMULATION ANALYSIS OF TAX REFORM

In this paper, we consider reforming the tax system to a comprehensive income tax model in order to amend the differential treatment of income sources. Our simulation analysis shows that the tax reform improves the effectiveness of the tax system on the redistribution of all sources of income including earned income, financial wealth income, and imputed rent. The analysis of incidence of the tax reform suggests that the tax burden for young renters decreases the most and that for young loan-free land owners increases the most through this tax reform.     

基于美国遗产税的效应分析

目前中国的贫富差距不断扩大，而现行个人所得税和财产税并未有效发挥其调解财富分配的功能。因此，具有缓解贫富差距作用的遗产税开征与否成为社会各界关注的热点问题。本文通过对美国遗产税的经济效应进行分析，力图得出符合我国国情的开征遗产税的结论，并为关注遗产税的相关人士提供有价值的参考建议。     

Inflation,tax rules,and the prices of land and gold

Traditional theory implies that the relative price of consumer goods and of such real assets as land and gold should not be permanently affected by the rate of inflation. A change in the general rate of inflation should, in equilibrium, cause an equal change in the rate of inflation for each asset price. The experience of the past decade has been very different from the predictions of this theory: the prices of land, gold, and other such stores of value have increased by substantially more than the general price level. The present paper presents a simple theoretical model that explains the positive relation between the rate of inflation and the relative price of such real assets. More specifically, in an economy with an income tax, an increase in the expected rate of inflation causes an immediate increase in the relative price of such ‘store of value’ real assets. The behavior of real asset prices discussed in this paper is thus a further example of the non-neutral response of capital markets to inflation in an economy with income taxes.     

The German Business Tax Reform of 2000: A General Equilibrium Analysis

In the year 2000 Germany enacted a major tax reform involving significant cuts in corporate and personal tax rates and a controversial change in the system of dividend taxation. This paper discusses the effects of the business tax reform on the German economy. The analysis is based on a detailed general equilibrium model of the OECD economy which is designed to illustrate the domestic and international effects of national tax policies. The simulations indicate that the German business tax reform will raise domestic economic activity and welfare, although the welfare gain will accrue disproportionately to households with a high ratio of property income to total income.