Disability insurance and optimal income taxation

This paper studies the design of disability insurance scheme when agents differ in their privately known productivity. We extend the Diamond and Mirrlees (1978) two period model to allow for agents differing ex-ante in their productivity and characterize the optimal nonlinear tax transfer that maximizes a utilitarian welfare function when per-period earnings and age are observable while individuals’ productivity and health status are not observable. We show that the induced tax/benefit scheme should exhibit a marginal income tax that decreases with age for some agents. A marginal subsidy on the young high productive income may be desirable. While the disability scheme always involves the old low productive agents to be indifferent between working and claiming disability benefits, this result is not always true for the old high productive agents. JEL Classification H55 · H23 · E62     

Nordic dual income taxation of entrepreneurs

The paper shows how entrepreneurial taxes interact with the career choice of individuals, the quality of entrepreneurs, and their investment behavior. It is particularly relevant to differentiate the early effects on start-up enterprises with substantial uncertainty from the tax effects on mature firms where the uncertainty is resolved. Conditions are derived for the Nordic dual income tax to be neutral and they are found to be stringent. Profit expectations matter. The Nordic dual encourages (discourages) the establishment of new enterprises by entrepreneurs who anticipate high (low) profitability.     

Capital and income financialization: Accounting for the 2008 financial crisis

Financialization is recognised as a key feature of the 2008 financial crisis. We argue that a lesson is the need for an accounting framework which focuses upon financialization allowing it to be monitored and controlled by stakeholders. We argue that financialization has been permitted through the failure of accounting to distinguish distributable income from capital gains/transfers and to distinguish productive from speculative capital. We introduce an accounting presentation (4S accounting) which effectively makes these distinctions. We use a stylized example to illustrate how it should be applied to the financial reporting of banks.     

Government size and economic growth in emerging market economies: a panel co-integration approach

A significant positive influence of both government size and domestic investment on economic growth is found in the long run during 1970–2006 for a sample of 19 emerging market economies, employing panel co-integration testing and estimating the parameters using dynamic ordinary least square method, for all the indicators, excepting the case when one chooses general government final consumption expenditure as a percentage of GDP a measure of government size and gross capital formation as a percentage of GDP a measure of domestic investment, with per capita GDP a proxy for economic growth. The findings corroborate the argument that diverse results of the earlier studies are due to different measures adopted.     

Capital Mobility and Source-Based Taxation of Capital Income in Small Open Economies

This paper examines the taxation of capital income in a small open economy that faces a highly elastic supply of internationally mobile capital and increasing tax competition. The analysis considers a wide variety of additional factors that affect the determination of capital income taxation policy, including the desire to tax economic rents earned by foreign and domestic firms, the desire to take advantage of any treasury transfer effects, the role played by transfer pricing and other financial accounting manipulations by foreign multinationals, the need for a backstop to the personal income tax and various political concerns. The paper evaluates several potential income and consumption-based tax reforms in this context. JEL Code: H21, H25, H87     

Intangible investment and Ramsey capital taxation

The standard analysis of optimal fiscal policy aggregates different types of assets into a unique capital good and all types of capital taxes into a unique capital tax. This paper considers a disaggregated framework: an economy with corporate and dividend taxes, where firms invest in both tangible and intangible assets (which can be expensed or sweat). In our setup, firms can always respond to changes in the timing of taxation. We find that the optimal long-run policy features zero corporate taxes and positive dividend taxes, with labor and dividend taxes being identical. Moreover, the initial capital levy is relatively small.     

Capital taxation and accumulation in a growing world economy with deficit finance

Prior analyses of the incidence of capital taxation have assumed that the government budget is balanced and changes in capital taxes affect either other taxes, transfers, or government expenditures. The general conclusion is that an increase in the capital tax rate will increase the gross-of-tax interest rate and decrease capital accumulation. This article examines the steady-state effects of capital taxation on the gross-of-tax interest rate and capital accumulation within a two-country model of overlapping generations, which allows capital taxation to directly affect government budget deficits. It is shown that, under the residence tax system, if the after-tax-interest rate is greater than the growth rate, an increase in the capital tax rate willdecrease the gross interest rate andincrease the capital-labor ratio. This result holds even under the territorial tax system, with some additional assumptions.     

Intertemporally Dependent Preferences and the Welfare Cost of Capital Income Taxation

The welfare cost of capital income taxation is analyzed utilizing intertemporally dependent preference operationalized using a variable rate of time preference. It is shown that if households exhibit increasing marginal impatience, then the welfare cost of capital income taxation is inversely related to the elasticity of the rate of time preference with respect to consumption. Therefore, the welfare cost of capital income taxation reported using time additive preferences may not be robust. Numerical examples show that the use of time additive preferences could result in the welfare cost of capital income taxation to be overestimated by as much as 25%.     

Income Taxation and Finite Horizons in a Human Capital Model

We address the issue ofcapital vs. labor income taxation in an overlapping generationsmodel with a positive externality in the human capital production.We compare the performance of the economy in the steady stateunder different tax policies. Three results are obtained. First,the size of the tax revenue required strongly affects the optimal(welfare maximizing) capital-labor income tax portfolio. Inparticular, a zero physical capital income tax rate need notbe optimal. Second, the way in which the finite life cycle issplit between the working and the retirement period also matters.And third, the size of the externality in the human capital productionalso affects the optimal income tax rate mix.     

主要经济体2011年经济形势与货币政策走向分析

该文展望了各主要经济体2011年经济形势与货币政策走向。分析指出,美国政府将维持＂双扩张＂政策,年底之前加息的可能性不大;欧元区复苏缓慢,下半年有可能加息;英国通胀压力增大,可能于上半年加息;日本政府面临减少债务还是克服通缩的两难选择;发展中国家完成退出战略,将进入加息通道。     

农村人力资本投资结构与内生经济增长

本文从理论上构建了农村人力资本投资结构(包括私人和公共)对农村经济增长影响的模型,运用我国四大经济地区面板数据分析了农村私人和公共教育投资与健康投资对人力资本增量的促进作用,以及人力资本增量对农村经济增长的内在影响并加以检验.结果主要表明:农村人力资本投资结构对人力资本增量,人力资本增量对农村经济增长都具有一定的正向作用;农村私人和公共人力资本投资相对强调了教育投资而轻视了健康投资;私人人力资本投资产出效率高于公共人力资本投资产出效率;四大地区农村人力资本投资额与结构都存在较为明显的差距.     

Taxation in an Overlapping Generations Model with Human Capital

We examine the impact of flat-rate taxes on intergenerational equity in an overlapping generations model of a small open economy, assuming the intergenerational externality of human capital accumulation. The externality may cause the difference between the growth rates in private human capital and in average human capital of the economy. If the externality is sufficiently small, the introduction of an interest income tax will benefit all future generations. In contrast, if it is sufficiently great, the introduction of a wage tax could harm all generations by raising financial asset holdings and thereby reducing consumption.     

Tax treatment of dividends and capital gains and the dividend decision under dual income tax

The paper analyses efficiency aspects of a dual income tax system with a higher tax on capital gains than dividends. It argues that apart from the distortions to investments claimed in earlier literature, the system puts even more emphasis in creating incentives for entrepreneurs to participate in tax planning. The paper suggests that the owner of a closely held company can avoid all personal taxes on entrepreneurial income by two tax-planning strategies. The first is the avoidance of distributions, which would be taxed at the tax rate on labour income. These funds would instead be invested in the financial markets. The second strategy is a distribute and call-back policy, converting retained profits into new equity capital. Interestingly, the outcome is that investment in real capital is not distorted in the long-run equilibrium. Empirical evidence using microdata is also provided.      

Why Capital Income Taxes Survive in Open Economies: The Role of Multinational Firms

This paper discusses the role of multinational firms and double taxation treaties for corporate income taxation in open economies. We show that it is optimal for a small open economy to levy positive corporate income taxes if multinational firms are taxed according to the full taxation after deduction system or the foreign tax credit system. Positive corporate taxes also occur in the asymmetric case where some countries apply the exemption system and others apply the tax credit system. If all countries apply the exemption system, the optimal corporate income tax is zero. We also show that, under tax competition, corporate income taxes are not necessarily too low from the perspective of the economy as a whole. While the undertaxation result is confirmed for the case of the exemption system, tax rates may also be inefficiently high if the deduction or the credit systems are applied.     

Taxable treatment of the subsistence level of income in German Natural Law

Natural Law has influenced German tax theories up to the present day. It has also influenced the request for the subsistence level exemption and the granting of a basic allowance, which only developed their full persuasiveness when derived from Natural Law. This paper shows that Natural Law tax theory (mid 1600s to early 1800s), based the subsistence level tax exemption on the right to live, the individualistic state contract theory and the ability-to-pay principle. It also reveals that Adam Smith's view regarding ability-to-pay as a basis for taxation was already contained in British Natural Law and in older German traditions.     

Controlling Investment Decisions: Depreciation- and Capital Charges

This paper examines a multiperiod principal-agent model in which a divisional manager has superior information regarding the profitability of an investment project available to his division. The manager also contributes to the periodic operating cash flows of his division through personally costly effort. We demonstrate that it is optimal for the principal to delegate the investment decision and to base the manager's compensation on the residual income performance measure. Our analysis points to a class of depreciation rules and to a particular capital charge rate which together ensure that a profitable (unprofitable) project makes a positive (negative) contribution to residual income in every period. As a consequence, the compensation parameters for each period can be chosen freely so as to address the moral hazard problems without impacting the manager's investment incentives.     

Compliance costs for personal income tax in a transition country: the case of Slovenia

The evaluation of taxpayers' compliance costs has grown in significance within tax system research over the last 15 years. In 2001, two surveys of VAT and personal income taxpayers were conducted in Slovenia to evaluate compliance costs for the 2000 fiscal year. This paper presents the results of research into compliance costs for personal income tax in Slovenia. The results show that compliance costs for personal income tax are relatively low, primarily because most taxpayers consider filing their tax declaration to be a simple procedure, which means that consultancy costs are low.     

Optimal Capital Income Taxes and Capital Controls in Small Open Economies

This paper studies the optimal taxation of capital income in a simplemodel of a small open economy where domestic residents can evade taxeson their foreign investment income. The national government can onlytax domestic capital income and can impose capital controls, whichhowever absorb real resources. The design of optimal policy in thismodel depends on the revenue needs of the government. For relativelylow levels of government expenditures, it turns out that the countrydoes not levy capital income taxes but may restrict capital exports.Otherwise, the country taxes domestic capital income and sets capitalcontrols such that capital exports are driven to zero, at an optimum.In contrast to other models with capital controls it turns out thatthis policy can lead to underinvestment in domestic capital.JEL Classification Number: E 62, F 41, H 21     

Alcohol taxation and regulation in the European Union

This article surveys alcohol consumption, taxation and regulation in the European Union (EU). It uses the estimates of cost-of-illness studies to gauge the external costs of harmful alcohol use. In all but one member state, the costs exceed alcohol excise duty collections. An optimal alcohol excise is difficult to design, because the welfare gains from a reduction in socially costly heavy drinking must be balanced against the welfare loss from a fall in moderate drinking. This suggests that while an alcohol excise increase may be efficiency improving, complementary regulatory measures, which focus on specific problem groups, should be an important element of the policy package. A case can also be made for reducing wasteful cross-border shopping by raising the minimum duties on wine, beer and spirits, preferably in line with their relative alcohol content.      

Optimal taxation and redistribution in an OLG model with unemployment

This paper concerns redistribution via nonlinear income taxation in an overlapping generations model with two ability-types. We assume that the wage rates are determined by bargaining between unions and firms, meaning that the equilibrium is characterized by involuntary unemployment. We show that the policy instruments that are used to calculate the marginal labor income tax rate for each ability-type give rise to intertemporal tax base effects. In addition, since the relationship between the employment and the capital stock implies intertemporal production inefficiency at the second best optimum, imperfect competition in the labor market may itself justify capital income taxation.