Optimal tariffs,optimal taxes and economic development

Cross-section and time-series data suggest that nations substitute income taxes for tariffs as they develop. This paper confronts the data within the context of a two-country open-economy endogenous growth model in which public expenditure is financed by an optimal tariff and income tax. When the latter is subject to administrative costs, the model predicts that the government will optimally substitute the income tax for the tariff as output rises along the transition. The model is calibrated and a simulation yields time paths for the shares of total government revenue derived from the tariff and the income tax that are consistent with the data.     

提升地方政府治理能力的房产税税制改革研究——以黑龙江省为例

地方政府公共服务体系的构建,城乡间公共服务差距的缩小,是地方政府治理能力水平的重要指标之一。地方政府公共服务能力的水平,有赖于地方财政收入的有利支撑。目前我国地方税收体系不够完善,地方政府很难从中取得大比例的收入支撑,建立地方主体税种,继续推进房产税改革试点,适时扩大房产税试点,对于地方财政收入,提升地方政府治理能力起到一定的促进作用。以黑龙江省为例提出了房产税改革的公平原则、财政原则与效率原则三位一体的税收原则体系。     

Welfare implications of trade liberalization and fiscal reform: A quantitative experiment

This paper studies the welfare implications of revenue-neutral trade liberalization and fiscal reform programs for developing economies using a multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy. We analyze how different combinations of tariffs – on imported consumption goods, intermediate inputs, and capital goods – and taxes – on consumption, labor income and capital income – affect the transitional and long-run welfare. We report three main findings. First, trade liberalization programs financed by consumption and labor income taxes tend to result in substantial welfare gains, but financing the lost tariff revenue through capital income taxes can have an adverse impact on welfare. Second, a significant fraction of welfare changes is due to transitional effects stemming from the allocation of resources in response to changes in tariffs and taxes. Third, trade liberalization and fiscal reform programs often translate into much larger welfare gains in countries that are more open to international financial markets.     

落实科学发展观的公共收入制度与政策研究

作为政府筹集公共资金的基本制度，政府公共收入制度是国民收入分配的重要工具和调控手段。建立一个规范、合理的政府公共收入制度和机制，是目前我国促进科学发展观贯彻落实的配套条件和保障因素。从现实看，除了要继续调整税制结构，完善税制体系，包括调整流转税税率和结构、改进和完善所得税、开征物业税、改革税收征管体制外，还应当从改革和完善政府非税收入体系，特别是改革地方政府土地出让和土地收入制度，改革和完善资源、环境税费制度，深化政府间财政收入分配体制的改革等方面加大力度，以促进资源节约型、环境友好型社会建设，促进落实科学发展观。     

世贸组织框架下我国主要对外贸易税收政策研究

对外贸易税收区别于其他税收的最基本之处在于其开征课税对象仅限于参与国际贸易的商品和服务。通过深入分析关税、出口退税、反倾销税三大贸易税收政策的主要功能在内、外部因素的影响下发生的变化,针对我国三大贸易税收当前亟待解决的问题,提出了具体的策略对策。     

Preference Erosion,Government Revenues and Non‐tariff Trade Barriers

Developing countries benefiting from developed country unilateral trade preferences fear that Doha Round tariff cuts will erode the value of those preferences. That these programmes confer significant benefits, however, is not clear. Studies indicate that the impact of preference erosion would be minimal for most developing countries. But for a small subset of middle‐income and least‐developed countries, concern may be warranted. WTO members, should address affected countries’ concerns, perhaps by tailoring WTO tariff negotiations to lessen adjustment pressures and providing development assistance. Developing countries also are anxious that lower tariffs will reduce government revenues. Dependence on tariff revenue is diminishing and trade liberalisation need not result in lower total tax revenues or even lower customs revenues. Much depends on a country's current tariff and trade regime, its tax structure and its overall economic structure. At some point, a country does need to broaden its tax base and look to other revenue sources to offset declining tariff revenues. Tax reform, therefore, complements trade reform. A third area of developing country concern is non‐tariff barriers (NTBs), which may limit market access even after tariffs are reduced. Despite prior WTO work in this area, NTBs remain a thorny issue for all WTO members.     

Tariff‐tax Reforms in Large Economies

This paper studies tariff‐tax reforms in a two‐region global New Keynesian model composed of a developing and an advanced region. In our baseline calibration, a revenue‐neutral reform that lowers tariffs in developing countries can reduce domestic welfare. The reason is that the increase in developing countries welfare due to higher output is dominated by the welfare losses stemming from the deterioration of the terms of trade. On the other hand, the reform increases output and welfare in the advanced countries and in the world as a whole. The effects that we highlight have not been studied in previous contributions to the literature, which looks at tariff‐tax reforms using a small open economy framework. Nominal rigidities have important implications for adjustment dynamics in our model. In the case of a ‘point‐for‐point’ reform, for example, price stickiness implies that the international dynamics of output is reversed compared to a revenue‐neutral reform.     

Tariff and tax reform: Dynamic implications

In an endogenously growing small open economy with a capital good and a consumption good, we characterize the optimal combination of an import tariff and consumption taxes under the revenue neutrality constraint. Focusing on the case in which the economy imports the capital good, we obtain two main results. First, consumption of the capital good is distorted more than the consumption good at the optimum. Second, the optimal tariff rate is positive, implying that free trade is not optimal even for a small open economy with no market failure.     

黑龙江省税收流失测算

税收流失不仅严重影响到国家财政收入的规模,而且在税收流失的过程中产生的一系列不良的经济效应,会逐渐渗透到经济发展的各方面。黑龙江省国有经济比重大,税收流失的内在机理、形式以及影响都有其自身的特点,其税收规模与经济增长呈正相关,税收流失规模低于全国水平,但其流失规模有增加的趋势。应规范政府职能,在一定时期内捋清税费关系,减轻纳税人的额外负担。抓住时机进行税制改革,使纳税人税收负担趋于合理。进一步完善征收管理法,加大对偷逃税款的惩罚力度,提高纳税人违法成本。     

Optimal tax and tariff policies with tax credits

This paper examines the optimal tax and tariff policies for a small open economy when mobile capital receives a tax credit for taxes paid to the host country. For a capital-importing country, a tax on capital equal to the source country tax rate (to capture tax revenue) combined with a subsidy to encourage capital imports is the optimal policy. Results are also derived for cases in which only one of the instruments can be varied. For a capital-exporting country that cannot reduce its capital tax rate, a subsidy to the sector using exported capital is desirable.     

Costly revenue-raising and the case for favoring import-competing industries

A standard finding in the political economy of trade policy literature is that we should expect export-oriented industries to attract more assistance than import-competing industries. In reality, however, trade policy is heavily biased toward supporting import industries. This paper shows how the costliness of raising revenue via taxation makes trade subsidies less desirable and trade taxes more desirable in a standard protection for sale framework. The model is then estimated and its predictions tested using U.S. tariff data. An empirical estimate of the costliness of revenue-raising is also obtained.     

A note on the maximum revenue tariff

This note attempts to prove that the maximum revenue tariff when the tariff revenue is measured in units of the exportable good will be higher than the maximum revenue tariff when the tariff revenue is measured in units of the importable good.     

Trade Liberalisation and Poverty: What are the Links?

This paper asks whether a developing country's own trade liberalisation could translate into increased poverty, and what information would be required to identify whether it will do so. It plots the channels through which such effects might operate, identifying the static effects via four broad groups of institutions – households, distribution channels, factor markets and government – and the dynamic issues of volatility, long–term economic growth, and short–term adjustment stresses. An increase in the price of something a household sells (labour, good, service) increases its welfare. Thus, the paper first explores the likely effects of trade liberalisation on the prices of goods and services, taking into account the distribution sector. Also critical is whether trade reform creates or destroys markets. Trade reform is also likely to affects factor prices – of which the wages of the unskilled is the most important for poverty purposes. If reform boosts the demand for labour–intensive products, it boosts the demand for labour and wages and/or employment will increase. However, not all developing countries are relatively abundant in unskilled labour and trade can boost demand for semi–skilled rather than unskilled, labour. Hence poverty alleviation is not guaranteed. Trade reform can affect tariff revenue, but much less frequently and adversely than is popularly imagined. Even if it does, it is a political decision, not a law of nature, that the poor should suffer the resulting new taxes or cuts in government expenditure. Opening up the economy can reduce risk and variability because world markets are usually more stable than domestic ones. But sometimes it will increase them because stabilisation schemes are undermined or because residents switch to riskier activities. The non–poor can generally tide themselves over adjustment shocks from a liberalisation, so public policy should focus on whether the initially poor and near temporary, setbacks. The key to sustained poverty alleviation is economic growth. There is little reason to fear that growth will not boost the incomes of the poor. Similarly, while the argument that openness stimulates long–run growth has still not been completely proven, there is every presumption that it will.     

The impact of trade facilitation on poverty and inequality: Evidence from low- and middle-income countries

This paper using a trade model of imperfect competition and product differentiation, examines the welfare effects of two popular tariff-tax reforms: (i) a tariff cut combined with an equal increase in the consumption tax and (ii) a tariff cut combined with an increase in the consumption tax that leaves the consumer price of the imported good unchanged. It is shown that if tax revenues are lump-sum distributed and firms compete over prices, then coordinated tariff-tax reforms improve welfare for a low degree of product differentiation, whereas these reforms are welfare-reducing for any degree of product differentiation under Cournot competition. When, instead, revenues are used to finance the provision of public goods, then the total effect of these reforms on welfare depends, under plausible assumptions, on the strength of the consumer's valuation of the public good.     

农村税费改革后县乡财政问题研究

随着我国农村税费改革的深入进行,县乡财政逐渐陷入困境,特别是全部免征农业税后,乡级财政更是步履维艰,乡镇负债难以化解。要解决这一问题,必须大力发展县域经济,积极培育县乡收入增长点;完善分税制改革,形成地方财政稳定的收入来源;健全科学的地方转移支付制度;逐步减少行政级次,缩减财政供养人员;加快县乡财政债务治理。     

Tariff and Consumption Tax Reforms in a Developing Tourism Economy

This paper examines the effects of a coordinated tax reform by replacing import tariffs with point-by-point increases in consumption taxes for a small-open developing tourism economy. Foreign tourists demand for the non-traded goods provided in the informal sector of the host economy, resulting in a tourism-induced terms-of-trade effect. The presence of inbound tourism lends a support to positive tariffs even for a small open economy. The indirect tax reform of this kind can increase residents’ welfare and government revenue when the initial tariffs are relatively larger to the consumption taxes.     

Trade openness,tax reform and tax revenue in developing countries

This article investigates empirically whether the effect of tax reform (involving the progressive replacement of trade tax revenue with domestic tax revenue) in developing countries' tax revenue performance (measured by tax revenue‐to‐GDP ratio) depends on the degree of trade openness of these countries. The analysis has used an unbalanced panel data set of 95 developing countries over the period 1981–2015 and the two‐system GMM approach. Results suggest that tax reform is positively and significantly associated with tax revenue performance in developing countries, with the magnitude of this positive effect increasing as countries experience a higher development level. Additionally, and more importantly, countries that further open up their economies to international trade enjoy a higher positive effect of tax reform on tax revenue than countries that experience a lower degree of trade openness. Therefore, these findings should help dissipate the concerns of policymakers in developing countries that greater openness to international trade would further erode their tax revenue, including by lowering their international trade tax revenue. In fact, the implementation of an appropriate tax reform in the context of greater trade openness would generate higher tax revenue, while concurrently allowing countries to reap the well‐known benefits of international trade.     

外国直接投资对我国税收贡献及影响的实证分析

在实证分析外国直接投资对我国各项税收总额及关税的定量贡献的基础上,采用行业分析的方法分析了外国直接投资对我国税收贡献的现状及存在的问题。本文认为虽然外国直接投资极大地促进了我国涉外税收、各项税收总额以及关税的增长,但给予其税收优惠也在一定程度上侵蚀了我国的税基,减少了税收收入。有必要分步骤地进行现有税收制度改革,最终统一内外资企业的税收制度。     

Cross-border pollution,public pollution abatement and capital tax competition

We analyze the case where governments have to use income tax revenue to finance public pollution abatement and relate the results to the existing literature on capital tax competition. We show that the impact of public pollution abatement on Nash taxes on mobile factor income is non-trivial and the standard results from the tax competition literature can be reversed. When the two countries are identical, the Nash equilibrium capital income taxes converge to the tax on immobile factors income as the degree of cross-border pollution converges to one. When countries are asymmetric and pollution is local the presence of public pollution abatement lowers the capital tax for the capital exporting country, while the impact on the capital tax of the capital importing country is ambiguous.     

Electronic Commerce,Trade and Tariff Revenue: A Quantitative Assessment

This paper assesses the quantitative importance of electronic commerce in trade and tariff revenue, in light of the WTO decision on ‘duty‐free cyberspace’. Electronic commerce is likely to boost international trade in software, digitizable media products (music, books) and many services sectors significantly. However, despite the growing importance of electronic commerce for trade, tariff revenue loss from duty‐free electronic commerce is unlikely to be significant.