Optimal Income Taxation and the Ability Distribution: Implications for Migration Equilibria

As recently argued by Diamond (1998), one of the key factors explaining the progressivity of an optimal non-linear income tax is the distribution of productivity among workers. Migration is one source of changes in the productivity distribution. How changes in the populations ability distribution affect optimal income tax schedules has received little attention. Changing the distribution generally affects both the objective function and the government budget constraint. We first consider the comparative statics of the fraction of highly-skilled workers with maximin and maximax welfare functions (so that only the second effect is present) and a quasi-linear utility function. We also present some results for a utilitarian social welfare function.We then study the interaction between mobility and redistributive taxation. We consider mobility by either the skilled or unskilled population under majority voting where governments take the population as fixed. If individuals choose to relocate independently, having identical ability distributions is always a stable equilibrium when the unskilled are the mobile group. However, this is not always the case when the skilled are mobile. If groups of individuals can choose where to locate, having identical ability distributions across regions is only an equilibrium when the mobile type has an overall majority.     

Pollution, Factor Taxation and Unemployment

When consumers choose between clean and dirty goods and the labour market clears, a green tax reform may not bring about a double dividend in the sense of increasing environmental quality and increasing employment. However, when firms choose between clean and dirty factors of production, and when there is unemployment, such a result is very likely to occur. The paper investigates a model of a monopolistic firm where labour and energy are factors of production and trade unions negotiate the wage rate, accepting some unemployment as a result of aggressive wage demands. It is shown that, in such a framework, a green tax reform will boost employment provided it does not increase the net-of-tax wage rate by too much. This is the case when the elasticity of substitution between labour and energy is greater than one, equal to one or not too far below one.     

Taxation and Migration in a Federal System

This paper discusses how taxation may affect migration, economic efficiency and income distribution. The institutional framework is a federal system, in which local authorities are responsible for the supply of public services and the financing of these services, and where the central authorities are in charge of income redistribution. The main conclusion is that a moderate policy of income redistribution is associated with greater centralization of the work force and greater economic inefficiency than is the case with both radical and more limited policies of redistribution.     

对金融税制缺陷与税制改革的思考

随着经济金融全球一体化，中国银行税制存在的问题，尤其是与国际上通行的税制不接轨的矛盾日益突出，影响了中国银行业的发展。基于此，银行税制改革应以公平和规范为基本目标，以促进金融业和国民经济的发展、保证国家财政收入、符合国际惯例为基本原则，从税收制度和税收政策方面入手，重点改革完善营业税、企业所得税等税种。     

Taxation,imperfect competition,and discontinuities

Most work on taxation assumes that market adjustments to taxation will be small and continuous and so analyzes the effects of taxation using standard marginal methods. However, the world often changes in large and discontinuous ways. This paper looks at the effects of taxation when discontinuities in market adjustments are allowed because market structure is determined endogenously by the discrete entry and exit decisions of firms. The results indicate that the potential for discontinuities generates tax effects that are considerably different from those that emerge when adjustments are small and continuous. With discontinuities, taxes can have large and discrete effects, for example, by increasing prices far in excess of the tax itself or by changing utility in a highly nonmarginal way. Of more significance, with discontinuities taxes can actually increase welfare even when they lessen competition and raise prices. Taxes can also have markedly different effects on the income and welfare of different groups. Consumers are always made worse off by a tax, but a tax may be supported by the firms in an industry if the tax limits entry and thereby increases firm profits.     

Taxation of Interest Income

Why is interest income taxed so much more heavily than other forms of capital income? This differential tax treatment has generated substantial tax arbitrage, resulting in lower tax revenue, efficiency costs, and apparently net gains to rich borrowers and net losses to poor lenders, together suggesting that this tax treatment makes no sense on welfare grounds. In examining this argument more formally, this paper reveals two omitted considerations that can help explain the existing tax treatment. First, the forecasted increase in the market interest rate results in a redistribution from rich borrowers to poor lenders. Yet this redistribution comes at no marginal efficiency cost, starting from a situation with no distortions to portfolio choice, so at the margin dominates further redistribution through the income tax. In addition, information about an individual's portfolio choice reveals information about her earnings ability, even controlling for observed labor income, if those who are more able tend to be less risk averse. By making use of this extra information about earnings ability, the tax system can be better tailored to redistribute from able to less able, for any given efficiency cost.     

宪政税收——一个从宪法视角分析税收的框架

宪政税收是宪法上对税收核心规则或最高原则的创设与运用之政法过程的制度性规范,这一过程要求税收的每一个核心要素都受制于宪政税收。理论上,一个符合中国现实的宪政税收模型是人民代表的一致同意。因为国家和人民的基本关系其实是税收关系,所以必须在宪法上界定国家与人民的权力与权利、责任与义务并使其基本关系宪法化。实践上,应以宪政税收为基本出发点,修改宪法的涉税条款,不必出台税收基本法,并以宪法理念或精神指导税收法律体系或制度的构建。     

Taxation, Public Policy, and Dynamics of Unemployment

This paper provides an overview of the key issues relating to taxation, public policy and the dynamics of unemployment.It takes issue with the widely held view that generous social insurance schemes and the associated highpayroll taxes have been the major cause of the high unemployment rates which have persisted in Europe over thepast 15 years. It puts forward a framework for a theory of adjustment, based on the portfolio theory of the riskaverse firm and the efficiency wage theory of labor markets. This is used to explain why in the onset of a downturn,the hiring rate may lag the layoff rate, thus giving rise to rising unemployment rates. It is also shown to provideguidance as to policies which enhance the ability of firms to bear risks and which reduce costs of hiring and firing.The paper argues that while policies which increase severance or layoff costs may be well intended they mayactually serve to exacerbate the magnitude of employment fluctuations. Similarly, unemployment compensation,which is designed to ease the burden on those who are unemployed, may lead to higher levels of equilibriumunemployment. These programs can be restructured in ways which simultaneously ease the short-run burden ofthose thrown into unemployment, while reducing the adverse impact of these programs on the unemployment rate.     

Environmental Policy,Efficient Taxation and Unemployment

In this paper, I consider environmental policy as part of a mixed tax problem with a general income tax and linear commodity taxes. I assume that the wage rate is determined by bargaining between unions and firms. The results show that the change in the number of employed persons, following a change in the use of a tax instrument, affects the optimal tax structure via two channels; (i) it makes the tax revenues available for public expenditures more or less costly to collect, and (ii) it affects the aggregate demand for the good that causes the environmental damage. This means that the use of taxation to counteract the labor market imperfection is not easily separated from the environmental aspects of tax policy.JEL Code: D62, H21, J60     

Ad Valorem Taxation on Intermediate Goods in Oligopoly

Thepaper compares the efficiency of value added taxation (VAT),in which intermediate goods are not taxed, with that of cascadetaxation, in which they are, when levied on imperfectly-competitivevertically-related industries. One type of commodity taxationis not always superior to the other in terms of welfare. Indeed,when intermediate-goods have close substitutes, VAT is the optimalcommodity tax system. But when input substitutability is weakor absent and input producers have market power, they shouldbe taxed. In fact, in the absence of lump sum taxes and withno input substitutability, it is optimal to tax, not to subsidize,the most monopolistic industry. True cascading, in which bothupstream and downstream industries are taxed, is thus betterthan VAT when, besides no input substitutability and both intermediateand final good producers with market power, the needed revenuerequirement is not small. We therefore submit a rationale forthe coexistence of VAT and cascade taxation.     

基层税务机关纳税服务存在的问题与优化对策

纳税服务是近年来税务机关工作的重点,本文通过分析基层实际情况,指出纳税服务存在的问题,并提出了如何优化的对策。     

税收学:方位与发展--关于拓展我国税收理论研究领域的思考

当前,西方经济学下的税收学研究还存在微观基础不充分的问题,同时税收学的跨学科研究仍需加强。因此,在继续关注当前研究热点的前提下,税收理论研究还应当向企业税收学、税收法律运行及税收伦理学等研究领域拓展。     

避免信托重复征税的基本原则

重复征税是我国信托税制中存在的最突出的问题。构建信托税制、避免重复征税,必须坚持税制的一般原理与信托制度独特的基本原理相结合,以信托导管原理为理论分析工具,确立以实质课税主义为核心的基本原则。     

Taxation and House-Price Uncertainty: Some Empirical Estimates

Purchasing a home involves a large and localized investment that leaves many families exposed to volatile house prices and at risk of losing their home equity. Price movements are typically not synchronized across cities, suggesting the potential for efficiency gains through risk sharing across households. In this paper, we consider the possibility of risk sharing through capital gains taxation. When full loss offset is permitted, potential gains and losses are reduced at the household level by taxation and distributed nationally, thereby allowing the tax authority to diversify away the local risks associated with owner-occupied housing. We simulate the effect of a capital gains tax with full loss offset on tenure choice and housing demand using micro-level data from the American Housing Survey, spanning ten years, from 1985 to 1995, and measures of time varying risk and return.     

The Taxation of Banking in an Integrating Europe

The banking sector is subject to explicit taxation and to bank regulation and supervision with quasi-fiscal implications. The assignment of national fiscal policy rights and duties regarding international banks in the EU varies with the fiscal instrument and with whether the international bank owns foreign branches or subsidiaries. Decentralized national policy-making in the EU gives rise to fiscal burdens on banks that differ internationally and with the national origin of banks in the same country. This paper discusses the international aspects of the overall fiscal regime facing banks in the EU and it evaluates some avenues for reform.     

Taxation and international banking

The purpose of this paper is an examination of the relationship between taxation and the working of international banking arrangements. The main task is directed to the ways taxation determinations by national authorities affect the ways international banks go about their business. International coordination through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a major focus of the analysis. There is no general exposition of principles bearing upon international taxation. Rather, attention is directed to the determination of tax obligations in any one jurisdiction. Thus, there is a close scrutiny of the mechanics of taxation in the international setting bringing out the uncertainties and the imponderables in any application. Much attention is given to structural arrangement in international banking as well as capital arrangements in any one jurisdiction and how this applies to and affects the banking group as a whole. The result is to bring out the complexity of the agenda for tax applications on a common basis across internationally operating groups. Most jurisdictions recognise that they cannot await common agreements because new instruments and arrangements emerge at very frequent intervals and their tax implications have to be addressed. There has to be relief from uncertainty if markets are to develop effectively. Thus, there is in an importance sense of partnership between tax authorities and market participants in many countries. International deliberations have taken too long.     

我国宏观税负与经济增长的实证分析

近年来,研究有关税收和经济增长之间关系的文献较多,但从马克思的再生产理论角度来进行研究的却不多。在宋则行先生推导的国民经济增长公式的基础上,进一步引入税收和政府支出因素的同时,再做出如下假定:资本的有机构成保持不变;政府只对剩余价值征税;剩余价值率保持不变;税收不会改变产品间的比例关系。从而可以更清晰地看出我国宏观税负的总体水平。     

论税收撤销权

税务机关如何正确行使撤销权,有关的法律规定过于简单。因而,需要从理论和实践相结合的角度对税收撤销权的成立要件、税收撤销权的行使及效力、税收撤销权的冲突等问题给予明确,以期对税收实践有所裨益。     

我国税源管理的问题与对策

税源管理问题是世界各国都十分重视的税收问题。特别是20世纪80年代以来,随着经济的全球化和跨国公司的发展,税源管理问题越来越受到各国政府的关注。如何通过税源管理,实现经济的协调发展和效率,建立法制的社会,已成为当前我国政府税收管理的核心问题。税源管理的主体是政府,因此,本文将从政府角度研究与税源管理相关的问题,并期待通过对相关问题的研究,提出加强我国税源管理的对策,为政府的税源管理提供有价值的参考。