Die Umstellung der Anlage der Heubeck-Richttafeln von Perioden- auf Generationentafeln und ihre Wirkung auf die Kosten von Pensionszusagen

Most German employers are using mortality tables provided by Heubeck AG, a German consultancy firm, for actuarial calculations of company pension plans. Before 2005, Heubeck AG has been publishing projected future period tables rather than cohort tables. This paper analyzes the cost of using such period tables in actuarial calculations for an individual employee’s defined benefit pension plan. Our benchmark is a plan that is fairly priced by using a cohort table. We find that the employer may incur significant costs from using a period table for calculating plan benefits. As life expectancy tends to be underestimated, benefits granted will be too generous. In contrast, using period tables for determining provisions for plan liabilities in tax accounting doesn’t carry extra costs. Although yearly tax deductions differ when using period or cohort tables, tax shields are roughly the same in NPV terms. Thus, Heubeck’s switch to cohort tables means a significant improvement for benefit calculation but won’t have tax effects, on average.     

Accounting of the German Statutory Pension Scheme: Balance Sheet,Cross‐Sectional Internal Rate of Return and Implicit Tax Rate

We present a framework for accounting of the German statutory pension scheme and calculate a balance sheet for the period 2005–14. Estimating a funding ratio of about 90 per cent, we present some policy recommendations in order to restore balancing of assets and liabilities. Extending and applying the methodology proposed by Settergren and Mikula (2005), we additionally estimate the aggregate cross‐sectional internal rate of return of the German pension scheme over this period. We are able to show that these internal rates of return are mainly financed by increasing contributions and by increasing unfunded liabilities. Additionally, our analysis reveals that from an expenditure perspective, the major part of the internal rate of return results from changing longevity rather than other changes. We also estimate the implicit tax rates from a cross‐sectional perspective and find that they can mainly be interpreted as an ‘implicit wealth tax’ on pension wealth. Finally, we analyse the impact of demographic change on the balance sheet employing a population projection. While the pure demographic effect leads to a decreasing funding ratio during population ageing, the automatic balancing mechanisms of the German pension scheme lead to a significant overfunding in the long run from the accounting perspective adopted in the Swedish pension system.     

There's something about saving …

The paper considers how people should plan their saving, given certain assumptions about inheritance and changes in household circumstances. The results are produced by a model that takes into account tax and state benefits as well as various private savings vehicles. It concludes that, for many households, saving for retirement through a ‘pension’ might not be optimum and that the best strategy is to vary the incidence and allocation of saving in response to changes in household circumstances.     

Encouraging savings through the life cycle

This paper discusses management of an individual's savings over the life cycle. It introduces the concept of a ‘Lifetime Savings Account’, to provide a coherent framework for organising investments: a ‘one-stop shop’ for all financial needs, encompassing cash, medium- and long-term investments, managing credit card debt, accessing loans, life insurance and keeping an individual's pension entitlements in one place. The paper proposes replacing tax relief with matching saving incentives, which could be administered by the account, and recommends introduction of a fixed-term Individual Savings Account (ISA) with incentives to keep invested for five years and extra incentives to renew or transfer to a pension. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of a ‘Minimum Lifetime Annuity’ which would be sufficient to ensure no need for meanstested benefits, also suggesting it might be sufficient if an individual has adequate capital in the Lifetime Savings Account to be able to purchase such an annuity if necessary, without having actually to effect the transaction.     

The Role of the Personal Tax System in Old‐Age Support: A Survey of 15 Countries

This paper examines the tax treatment of pensioners in 15 industrialised countries. Using a standard methodology, it calculates the average and marginal tax rates of older people and compares them with those of people of working age. These are then combined with a model of pension entitlements in different countries. This shows that tax differentials play an important role in old‐age support. We discuss the appropriate way for the tax system to support pensioners and the implications for the tax treatment of private pensions.     

日本养老保险的税收政策及启示

目前,我国的养老保险制度存在一定的缺陷:基本养老保险覆盖面窄,替代率过高;企业年金和个人储蓄性养老保险发展缓慢。本文介绍了日本运用税收政策促进养老保险制度发展的做法,并从中得出了一些可供我国借鉴的经验:基本养老保险税收政策暂不宜进行调整;应尽快制定企业年金的相关税收政策;对个人储蓄性养老保险进行税收扶持。     

Ageing and the tax implied in public pension schemes: simulations for selected OECD countries

A key figure suited to measuring intergenerational imbalances in unfunded public pension schemes is given by the ‘implicit tax rate’ imposed on each generation's lifetime income. The implicit tax arises from the fact that, quite generally, pension benefits fall short of actuarial returns to contributions paid to these systems while actively working. Under current pension policies, implicit tax rates will increase sharply for younger generations in most industrialised countries. In this paper, this is illustrated for the cases of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Nevertheless, there are remarkable differences across countries regarding both the level of implicit taxes and their development over successive age cohorts, which can be attributed to differences in ageing processes and in the institutional features of national pension systems. In addition, we can demonstrate how effective different approaches to pension reform are in smoothing the intergenerational profile of implicit tax rates.     

Debt Tax Shields Around the OECD World

Taxes affect a company’s optimal capital structure, value, and cost of capital, but their impact depends on the tax regime of the country where the company operates. The OECD classifies the tax regimes of its member countries in seven groups. In this paper we offer a general model that encompasses those seven groups. We show that tax benefits of debt vary significantly across tax systems, and that using either Modigliani and Miller’s (1963) or Miller’s (1977) formulas in other tax regimes can lead to quantitatively important mistakes. We also find a significantly positive relationship between average leverage in OECD countries and our indicator of tax shields.     

Portfolio selection with a drawdown constraint

When identifying optimal portfolios, practitioners often impose a drawdown constraint. This constraint is even explicit in some money management contracts such as the one recently involving Merrill Lynch’ management of Unilever’s pension fund. In this setting, we provide a characterization of optimal portfolios using mean–variance analysis. In the absence of a benchmark, we find that while the constraint typically decreases the optimal portfolio’s standard deviation, the constrained optimal portfolio can be notably mean–variance inefficient. In the presence of a benchmark such as in the Merrill Lynch–Unilever contract, we find that the constraint increases the optimal portfolio’s standard deviation and tracking error volatility. Thus, the constraint negatively affects a portfolio manager’s ability to track a benchmark.     

Rentenversicherung, Bev?lkerungsentwicklung und Kapitalmarktrendite – Eine Simulationsrechnung

How can the pension schemes be sustainably financed? This is an important issue particularly with regard to the demographic changes in many industrialized countries but also in other emerging economies such as China and India. In this paper, we use a macroeconomic model of overlapping generations to analyze the impacts of the demographic changes as well as the interactions between pension system, bond and stock markets. Furthermore, we examine how the pension system influences the distribution of wealth, consumption and saving within generations. We found out that an aging population will cause a drastic decline. Moreover, we examined which impacts on individuals?? welfare demographic changes can have for an existing pay-as-you-go pension scheme. An increase of pension age combined with a decrease of the contributions seems to be the best policy. On the other hand, increases in contributions as a result of demographic changes show the highest welfare losses.     

Public Pressure and Corporate Tax Behavior

We use a shock to the public scrutiny of firm subsidiary locations to investigate whether that scrutiny leads to changes in firms’ disclosure and corporate tax avoidance behavior. ActionAid International, a nonprofit activist group, levied public pressure on noncompliant U.K. firms in the FTSE 100 to comply with a rule requiring U.K. firms to disclose the location of all of their subsidiaries. We use this setting to examine whether the public pressure led scrutinized firms to increase their subsidiary disclosure, decrease tax avoidance, and reduce the use of subsidiaries in tax haven countries compared to other firms in the FTSE 100 not affected by the public pressure. The evidence suggests that the public scrutiny sufficiently changed the costs and benefits of tax avoidance such that tax expense increased for scrutinized firms. The results suggest that public pressure from outside activist groups can exert a significant influence on the behavior of large, publicly traded firms. Our findings extend prior research that has had little success documenting an empirical relation between public scrutiny of tax avoidance and firm behavior.     

基于行业差异的企业年金最优个人缴费率研究

借助于两期叠代模型,构建个人效用函数以及政府社会福利函数,测算满足个人生命周期效用最大化和社会福利最大化的最优企业年金个人缴费率.研究表明:全社会最优的年金个人缴费率为6.40％,当前费率水平还有较大提升空间;按各行业最优缴费率征缴年金费用,可以提高年金制度的养老保障程度;把过剩的年金缴费能力转移给个人账户,可以实现帕累托优化效果;给予年金个人缴费5％的税收优惠,可以鼓励和加快年金制度发展.     

Pension Funds and the U.K. Economy

Abstract

The paper considers the impact of U.K. defined benefit (DB) pension plan unding and investment on the U.K. economy. It suggests that many conventional theories are based on incomplete or inconsistent economics. In particular, the author suggests that:

? An economy cannot really gain competitive advantage from high returns on the domestic assets in which pension funds invest.

? DB liabilities are essentially similar for most schemes and can be closely matched with bonds.

? Funding pension liabilities has no primary impact on individuals’ consumption and saving or on firms’ capital investment.

? Pension funds are not natural investors in the equity of new ventures.

The conclusion of the paper is that the most significant impact of pension funds on the U.K. economy relates to the costs imposed by extreme mismatching between their financial assets and liabilities. The author argues that such risks can, in essence, “crowd out” entrepreneurial risk. He asserts that the U.K. economy would gain from greater focus on the matching of these assets and liabilities, and that the best way to stimulate enterprise is by eliminating the frictional costs in the economy arising from current practices.     

The Marginal Cost of Public Funds in Closed and Small Open Economies

The efficiency cost of taxation has become an increasingly important consideration in the evaluation of alternative tax policy options. This paper provides a review of estimates of the efficiency costs of taxation and presents some new estimates for small open economies. The available studies suggest that, in closed economies, the distortions from taxation are highest for corporate taxes and lowest for wage taxes. This efficiency ranking of different taxes does not hold in small open economies. It is shown that, in a small open economy, this ranking is reversed. Personal income taxes are less distortionary than wage taxes primarily because the link between domestic saving and investment is severed. Corporate taxes are also less distortionary for a variety of factors, such as changes in depreciation levels, payments to foreigners and terms of trade.     

Free trade taxation and protectionist taxation

The goal of this paper is to seek new insight regarding international tax policy by recasting it in parallel with the theory of international trade. This is accomplished by defining a free trade taxation regime as one that is consistent with an efficient worldwide allocation of capital, and evaluating within this perspective various aspects of tax policy, such as value-added (axes, integration, income shifting, and the choice of worldwide or territorial system of taxes.Compatibility with free trade is not the only standard against which to judge an international tax system. Nevertheless, as national economies become more integrated the importance of international taxation for the efficient functioning of capital markets will become a central policy issue.     

个税递延型养老保险的可行性研究——以北京市为例

随着我国人口老龄化步伐的加快,社会基本养老保险和企业年金已经不能充分满足全社会老年人的生活消费。本文以北京市为特例,通过对北京市的老龄化现状进行分析,说明个税递延型养老保险在北京市实施的必要性。再通过对市政府财力及北京市的独特优势进行分析,说明北京市具备实行个税递延型养老保险的条件,并对这类保险方案提出了制度构想。     

Investment timing and optimal capital structure under liquidity risk

Deterioration in debt market liquidity reduces debt values and affects firms' decisions. Considering such risk, we develop an investment timing model and obtain analytic solutions. We carry out a comprehensive analysis in optimal financing, default, and investment strategies, and stockholder–bondholder conflicts. Our model explains stylized facts and replicates empirical findings in credit spreads. We obtain six new insights for decision makers. We propose a ‘new trade-off theory’ for optimal capital structure, a new tax effect, and new explanations of ‘debt conservatism puzzle’ and ‘zero-leverage puzzle’. Failure in recognizing liquidity risk results in substantially over-leveraging, early bankruptcy or investment, overpriced options, and undervalued coupons and credit spreads. In addition, agency costs are surprisingly small for a high liquidity risk or a low project risk. Interestingly, the risk shifting incentive and debt overhang problem decrease with liquidity risk under moderate tax rates while they increase under high tax rates.     

Assessing the international spillover effects of capital income taxation

Changes in capital taxes by one economy spill onto other economies with internationally mobile capital. We evaluate these impacts using a two-region, intertemporal general equilibrium model. The foreign economy's unilateral reduction in corporate income taxation has positive but small effects on U.S. welfare. In contrast, unilateral reductions in personal income taxation impose large negative spillovers. The differences result from CIT being source-based and PIT residence-based. The CIT cut reduces tax burdens to U.S. residents who invest abroad, while the PIT cut reduces foreigners' tax burdens only. Through general equilibrium adjustments neglected in simpler models, the PIT cut lowers U.S. residents' welfare.     

Tax Systems in the World: An Empirical Investigation into the Importance of Tax Bases, Administration Costs, Scale and Political Regime

We study the structure of taxation in a sample of 100 democratic and nondemocratic regimes over three time periods. The results provide strong support for several regularities in the world as a whole, specifically (1) scale effect: utilization of each tax source increases as the government expands, (2) base effect: tax systems rely more heavily on relatively larger tax bases, and (3) administrative cost effect: lower costs of administration lead to increased reliance on the corresponding revenue source. We also investigate the role of political regime and find that democracies rely substantially more on other income taxation, possibly because this tax source requires a higher degree of voluntary compliance. JEL Code: H2, D72, D78, E31, E51, F13, P35     

The runaway taxpayer

In order to analyze the determinants of tax evasion, the existing literature on individual tax compliance typically takes a ‘prior-to-audit’ point of view. This paper focuses on a ‘post-audit, post-detection’—so far unexplored—framework, by investigating what happens after tax evasion has been discovered and noncompliant taxpayers are asked to pay their debts. We first develop a two-period dynamic model of individual choice, considering an individual that has been already audited and detected as tax evader, who knows that Tax Authorities are looking for her to cash the due amount. We derive the optimal decision of running away in order to avoid paying the bill, and show that the experience of a prior tax notice reduces the probability to behave as a scofflaw. We then exploit information on ‘post-audit, post-detection’ tax compliance provided by an Italian collection agency for the period 2004–2007 to empirically assess the relationship between prior tax notices and unlawful behavior. The evidence from alternative logit model specifications supports our theoretical prediction: successful tax notices are negatively correlated with the probability of running away.