The effects of casino gambling on state tax revenue

A theoretical model of state tax structure implies that revenue enhancement due to the introduction of casino gambling is less likely in states where incomes taxes do not exist and where casino tax rates are lower than the corresponding tax rates on sales taxable and excise taxable goods. Further, it is clear that casino gambling is likely to adversely impact lottery tax revenues earmarked for education. Due to the cross-price effects of gambling, tax revenues will likely decline in states that introduce nontaxable casino gambling on Indian reservations. In the longer term, as casino gambling proliferates increasing competition among states, there will be negative revenue consequences due to fewer tourism and employment dollars.     

Environmental and public finance aspects of the taxation of energy

This paper reviews potential applications of environmental taxesin the energy sector. Theoretical and practical arguments forusing environmental taxes are reviewed, and possible arrangementsoutlined for levying environmental taxes on energy. In contrastto most environmental taxes, taxes on energy have the potentialto raise revenues sufficient to alter the constraints and opportunitiesin fiscal policy. A carbon tax levied at a rate of £200per tonne could raise revenues equivalent to about 11 per centof total UK tax receipts, allowing income tax to be halved,or corporation tax abolished. Inappropriate use of the revenues,or their unnecessary dissipation, can greatly add to the costsof environmental policy. But, environmental taxes are unlikelyreduce the overall excess burden from taxation below the currentlevel, and the case for ecotaxes must thus primarily be madein terms of their environmental benefits.     

当前经济形势下我国征收环境税的可行性分析

环境税是解决"外部性"的一种有效方法,而我国是否开征环境税一直为学术界讨论的焦点。本文首先从环境税内涵和现代税收新的理念入手,其次着重分析在当前经济形势下征收环境税的时机较为成熟,最后提出目前我国征收环境税具有一定的可行性分析。     

The double dividend from carbon regulations in Japan

Using a multisector dynamic CGE model, this paper examines the double dividend from carbon regulations in Japan. The model has 27 sectors and goods (eight goods generate carbon emissions) and covers 100 years (from 1995 to 2095). When carbon regulations are introduced, pre-existing taxes are reduced, keeping government's revenue constant. Our main findings are summarized as follows. First, the weak double dividend arises in all scenarios. This means that by using revenues from carbon tax to finance reductions in pre-existing distortionary taxes, one can achieve cost savings relative to the case where the tax revenues are returned to households in lump-sum fashion. Second, the strong double dividend does not arise from reductions in labor and consumption taxes, but it does from reductions in capital tax. The second result is attributable to the nature of the pre-existing tax system in Japan where capital taxes are more distortionary than labor and consumption taxes. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (3) (2007) 336–364.     

Uncertainty and Optimally Uniform Commodity Taxes

This paper examines the implications of uncertainty for the structure of optimal commodity taxes in the presence of a linear income tax. Consumers face uncertain income and commit to consumption of some goods before the resolution of uncertainty and to others after. Preferences are separable between labor and consumption goods. We prove that optimal commodity taxes are (i) uniform within the category of noncommitted goods if their subutility is logarithmic; (ii) uniform within the two categories if both subutilities are logarithmic; and (iii) nonzero across categories, with the tax rate on precommitted goods being lower than the tax rate on noncommitted goods.     

环境税研究的效应发凡及其选择性引申

自20世纪90年代OECD国家开展环境税改革以来,理论界对环境税效应展开了深入研究。环境税的研究都是基于特定的市场结构,尤以基于完全竞争市场结构的研究臻于成熟。市场结构的假设方面更多地考虑经济运行中的各种不完全竞争因素,淡化"双重红利"概念并更加注重考察环境税对环境、效率和公平的影响,强化某种特定的环境税征收方式对政府、企业和家庭的各种影响的"事前预测",更多地从消费者和生产者角度分析环境税改革的效应是环境税研究的方向。     

Tax enforcement and corporate employment: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

This study investigates how tax enforcement affects corporate employment in China. We utilize the merger of the State Tax Bureau and Local Tax Bureaus as a quasi-natural experiment and adopt a difference-in-differences framework to identify causality. The results show that tougher tax enforcement has a significant and negative effect on corporate employment and that this effect is more pronounced for firms with higher labor intensity, greater financial constraints, more severe labor market frictions, a lower initial tax rate, lower tax transfer ability, and greater credit market imperfections. Further, the mechanism tests demonstrate that tougher tax enforcement leads to increases in the effective income tax rate, cash holdings, and the cash flow sensitivity of real investment but decreases in accounts receivable and dividend payments. These results are consistent with the liquidity constraints channel. In addition, we exclude several alternative explanations and conduct a series of robustness checks. Overall, our findings indicate that corporate tax enforcement has large effects on the local labor demand, which provides some useful insights for local governments to stabilize employment during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Pooling my personal account: Income responses to the payroll tax in China

Developing countries collect not only a far lower share of GDP in taxes, but also less payroll taxes than rich countries. This paper explores income responses to the payroll tax by evaluating the 2006 pension reform that subtracted 3 percentage points of employees' Defined Contribution account in China. First, our estimate of total income elasticity with respect to the pension rate is larger than 2, implying a lower optimal payroll tax rate than in rich countries. Second, we separate total income into labor and non-labor income, and show significant income shifting from labor to non-labor income. Third, we provide suggestive evidence that income responses to the pension reform are from evasion rather than real responses. We emphasize the necessity of administrative capacity for developing countries to extend the pension system. Remarkably, sharing the employer payroll tax with employees may be a self-enforcement mechanism, similar to the value-added tax, of the payroll tax.     

Labor market deregulation and globalization: empirical evidence from OECD countries

This paper empirically investigates the influence of globalization on various aspects of labor market deregulation. I employ the data set by Bassanini and Duval (2006) on labor market institutions in OECD countries and the KOF index of globalization. The data set covers 20 OECD countries in the 1982–2003 period. The results suggest that globalization did neither influence the unemployment replacement rate, the unemployment benefit length, public expenditures on ALMP, the tax wedge, union density nor overall employment protection. In contrast, protection of regular employment contracts was diminished when globalization was proceeding rapidly. In fact, domestic aspects, such as unemployment and government ideology are more important determinants of labor market institutions and deregulation processes in OECD countries than globalization. For this reason, working conditions of unskilled workers are not likely to deteriorate and the jobs of unskilled workers are not likely to disappear in the course of globalization. All this is, of course, not to insinuate that globalization has any benign influence on labor market institutions.     

Dynamic Scoring in a Romer‐Style Economy

This article analyzes how changes in tax rates affect government revenue in a Romer‐style endogenous growth model. Lower tax rates on financial income (returns to physical capital and intellectual property) are partially self‐financing primarily because lower financial income taxes stimulate innovation and enhance labor productivity in the long run. In the baseline calibration, about half of a tax cut is self‐financing in the long run, substantially more than in the Ramsey model. The dynamics of the economy's response to a tax cut are very sluggish and, for some variables, nonmonotonic.     

Second-Best Pollution Taxes and the Structure of Preferences

We characterize optimal taxes on polluting and nonpolluting goods in Ramsey and Mirrlees second-best environments. The polluting good tax differs from the Pigouvian tax by Ramsey terms in the first and by Stiglitz/Mirrlees plus another adjustment term in the second. These terms can be positive, negative, or zero. If preferences are weakly separable in public and private goods, with the private good subutility weakly separable in labor and produced goods, nonpolluting goods are taxed uniformly and the concept of a tax differential between polluting and nonpolluting goods is well defined. The differential is then less than the Pigouvian tax in the Ramsey framework, but it can be greater, equal to, or smaller than the Pigouvian tax in the Mirrlees second best. In Mirrlees second best, if preferences are separable in labor supply and other goods, the second-best tax differential is identical to the Pigouvian tax.     

Environmental regulation and responses of local governments

In 1998, China approved the setup of two control zones and implemented stringent environmental regulation in these zones. This policy enables us to use the difference-in-difference method to investigate local governments' responses to environmental regulation. We find that tough environmental regulation increases tax rate but does not affect local government expenditure. Among the mechanisms through which environmental regulation positively affects tax rate are the negative effects of environmental regulation on investment of fixed assets, number and total profits of above-scale industrial firms in dirty industries of TCZ cities. In addition, the effect of environmental regulation on tax rate is positively related to policy strength and proportion of the secondary industry. Moreover, tough environmental regulation increases the shares of revenue from enterprises and agricultural taxes in budgetary revenue, but decreases the share of value-added tax in budgetary revenue. These findings highlight additional cost of environmental regulation (aside from those mentioned in literature), including increased burdens of the private sector that would lead to large distortions, and aggravated unfair distribution of taxes. The additional cost should be considered when evaluating the environmental policy.     

International spillover effects of consumption taxation

This paper investigates the international spillover effects of a revenue-neutral increase in consumption taxes coupled with a reduction in wage taxes in a two-country open economy. Many economists feel that the consumption tax would be an improvement over the income tax. This paper provides counterexamples to the conventional wisdom. We show that conversion to a consumption tax may reduce capital accumulation and may transmit a negative externality to the rest of the countries in the world economy under certain conditions: endogenous labor supply and bequests.     

The impact of an accelerated depreciation tax policy on employment: Evidence from China

We examine the impact of an accelerated depreciation tax policy (ADP) on employment. As a tax incentive policy, we expect an ADP to impact firm behavior significantly, but its effect on employment remains uninvestigated. Leveraging the two-stage implementation of an ADP in selected industries in China in 2014 and 2015 and using a difference-in-differences research design, we find that: 1) the ADP significantly increases employment, which is consistent with the output effect hypothesis; and 2) the ADP increases firms’ labor demand, mainly by stimulating investment in fixed assets and easing their financial constraints. Additional analysis suggests that the impact of ADP on employment is more salient for small firms, non-state-owned firms, and high growth firms, and skilled labor employment, indicating that the ADP is more effective for firms with high financial constraints and hiring skilled labor to accompany the increase in capital investment.     

Fiscal and environmental policy under monopolistic competition

Summary Keynesian demand management offsets some of the distortions caused by monopolistic competition and thus induces multiplier effects on national income and environmental damages. The cost of public funds rises with the virtual environmental tax and the degree of competition in the product market. The virtual environmental tax rises with abatement and falls with the cost of public funds. Consequently, greener preferences induce a rise in the virtual environmental tax, the cost of public funds and public abatement, and a fall in the provision of traditional public goods. A greater preference for traditional public goods harms environmental quality, since both abatement and output fall. Protecting cartels lowers the cost of public funds and may raise the provision of both traditional public goods and abatement. Environmental quality may thus rise, but other components of social welfare will fall. The paper also analyses the effects of private abatement, pollution taxes, fiscal consolidation and the progressivity of the tax system on government policy, employment, environmental quality and welfare.This paper was prepared for the OCFEB workshop Quantitative Economics for Environmental Policy held at the Tinbergen Institute Rotterdam, March 22 1994. We thank Casper van Ewijk and Jenny E. Ligthart for useful comments.     

增值税转型对珠三角的影响分析

我国自2009年1月1日起,在全国所有地区、所有行业推行增值税转型改革,改革的核心是扩大了增值税的抵扣范围,这对企业来说是一大利好,但对财政收入则是直接减少税收。本文主要从企业、财政收入和就业三个角度分析了增值税转型对珠三角的影响,在此基础上,提出了关于未来增值税改革的几点意见。     

Shareholder Income Taxes and the Relation between Earnings and Returns*

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how shareholder‐level taxes affect earnings response coefficients (ERCs). Our tests indicate that when the tax rate on dividends increases, ERCs decrease for firms with high levels of dividend yield and whose marginal investor is likely to be an individual. For firms with high levels of share repurchase yield and whose marginal investor is likely to be an individual, an increase in dividend tax rate has no discernible effect on ERCs. These results are consistent with the notion that the tax penalty on dividends, relative to capital gains, reduces the earnings‐return relation.     

The value-added tax reform and labor market outcomes: Firm-level evidence from China

The tax incentives designed to stimulate firm investment may have a large and unexpected impact on labor market outcomes. Using a comprehensive data set on Chinese manufacturing firms during the period 1998–2007 with a difference-in-differences approach, we examine the impact of the value-added tax reform in 2004 on the firm-level labor market outcomes. We find that firms in eligible industries and pilot regions (treated firms) enjoying lower costs of purchasing fixed assets under the reform tended to increase capital investment and reduce employment simultaneously relative to firms that did not have tax incentives (the control firms). Compared with the control firms, the treated firms became more capital intensive but had declines in labor share in value added and average wage. We also find that the employment adjustment is associated with increase in the share of skilled workers in terms of engineers and technicians, but not workers with a college degree or higher.     

EVALUATING TAX REFORMS IN THE PRESENCE OF EXTERNALITIES

According to the double-dividend hypothesis, revenue-neutralgreen tax reforms are expected both to improve the quality ofthe environment and to reduce the existing tax distortions.This paper develops welfare measures which are used to estimatethese dividends separately. It is shown that the existing taxsystem and the choice of the tax rate cuts which accompany anincrease in green taxes have considerable impact on the magnitudeof the environmental dividend. Even a negative impact cannotbe ruled out. Furthermore, the welfare measures allow us toanalyse the trade-off between the two dividends and to identifywelfare-improving tax reforms.     

照看子女、劳动参与和灵活就业:中国女性如何平衡家庭与工作

文章利用中国家庭收入调查2007和2008年数据研究了未成年子女对女性劳动参与和职业选择的影响。研究结果表明，家中有未成年子女显著降低了女性工作的可能性，提升了工作女性选择灵活就业的可能性；学龄前子女更有可能导致女性退出劳动力市场，而6-14岁子女更有可能导致女性选择灵活就业；不工作和选择灵活就业使女性更有可能成为学龄前子女的主要照顾者，但灵活就业并没有减少女性的工作时间；女性获得工作灵活性的代价是工资水平显著下降。上述结论在解决了女性劳动参与、职业选择和生育决策的内生性问题之后依然是稳健的。文章的结论对"全面二孩"政策背景保障女性就业有一定借鉴意义。