对提升直接税比重 均衡税制结构的思考

提高直接税比重是税制改革所需迫切解决的重要议题，从而实现税种配置上的大致均衡。但是，由于征管手段等原因，至今未取得实质性突破。构建直接税体系，更符合税负公平和量能纳税为原则的现代税法核心，因此逐步提高直接税比重，并扬长避短，发挥直接税和间接税的各自优势。  

税收缺口问题研究述评

对税收流失的治理是提高税收收入的重要保证。税收缺口反映了税收流失的相对规模。从国外相关实证研究结果看,地下经济、纳税习俗及征管效率对税收缺口的大小具有非常重要的影响。我国的税收流失与这三个因素都具有非常密切的联系,应结合我国的实际情况,对上述三个因素对我国税收缺口的影响进行深入研究。  

财税政策调控收入分配差距的功能和局限性

改革开放以来,我国城乡居民收入水平在不断提高的同时,收入差距也不断拉大。我国现行财税政策调节收入分配的效应弱化,缩小收入分配差距作用存在局限性。应尽快完善我国财税政策,建立一个覆盖居民收入运行全过程的财政税收调控体系,充分发挥税收调节收入差距的作用。  

Taxpayers' Behavioural Responses and Measures of Tax Compliance ‘Gaps’: A Critique and a New Measure

The work of Feldstein (1995 and 1999) has stimulated substantial conceptual and empirical advances in economists' approaches to analysing taxpayers' behavioural responses to changes in tax rates. Meanwhile, a largely independent literature proposing and applying alternative measures of tax compliance has also developed in recent years, which has sought to provide tax agencies with tools to identify the extent of tax non‐compliance as a first step to designing policies to improve compliance. In this context, measures of ‘tax gaps’ – the difference between actual tax collected and the potential tax collection under full compliance with the tax code – have become the primary measures of tax non‐compliance via (legal) avoidance and/or (illegal) evasion. In this paper, we argue that the tax gap as conventionally defined is conceptually flawed because it fails to incorporate behavioural responses by taxpayers. We show that conventional tax gap measures, which ignore the presence of behavioural responses, exaggerate the degree of non‐compliance. This potentially applies both to indirect taxes (such as the ‘VAT gap’) and direct (income) taxes. Further, where these conventional tax gap measures motivate reforms designed to increase the tax compliance rate, they will likely have a tax‐base‐reducing effect and hence generate a smaller increase in realised tax revenues than would be anticipated from the tax gap estimate.