政府最优收入平滑分析——对中国1953～2005年数据的实证研究

收入平滑假说研究在跨期预算条件下,政府如何利用税收和发行货币两种方式来追求支出融通政策所产生的扭曲成本最小。文章利用中国1953年至2005年的数据,对放松货币流通速度不变假设下的收入平滑假说进行检验,以探究我国财政和货币当局在税率和通货膨胀率的制定上是否符合收入平滑原理。结果显示,收入平滑假说在中国成立。     

International evidence of tax smoothing in a panel of industrial countries

A panel of industrial countries is examined for evidence of ‘tax smoothing’. Tax smoothing results when governments minimize tax distortions over time. The model provides a positive theory of government debt and is due primarily to Barro. Unit root tests are performed in panel data to test the null hypothesis of nonstationary tax rates. Panel regressions are then undertaken to test the null hypothesis that tax rate changes are unpredictable and test for evidence of an alternative hypothesis. Political and economic variables are examined for their ability to predict tax rate changes. Overall, the results cannot reject the null hypotheses and support tax smoothing by national governments.     

Road tax interactions among local governments: a spatial panel data analysis of the French case over the period 1984–2000

This article contributes to the literature on local tax interactions. Its novelty lies in its focus on the interactions of local governments via an indirect local tax on vehicles such as the road tax sticker and its analysis of interactions between direct and indirect local taxation. The main purpose of this article is to provide an empirical analysis of the reaction of road tax policy in a given French ‘department’ to changes in road tax policy in other ‘departments’. The analysis uses a novel panel data set covering the 96 French metropolitan ‘departments’ for the period from 1984 to 2000. First, the results confirm the presence of significant spatial interactions between French ‘departments’ due to the road tax sticker. Second, the estimation results also show that the business tax rate and/or the property tax rate on developed land are complements to the road tax sticker, whereas the residence tax rate and/or the property tax rate on undeveloped land are substitutes to the road tax instrument. Finally, I find that ‘departments’ with a larger, younger and older population set higher rates for the road tax sticker. The results are robust regarding alternative weight matrices.     

The Tax‐smoothing Hypothesis: Evidence from Sweden, 1952–1999

This paper tests Barro's (1979) tax‐smoothing hypothesis using Swedish central government data for the period 1952–1999. According to the tax‐smoothing hypothesis, the government sets the budget surplus equal to expected changes in government expenditure. When expenditure is expected to increase, the government runs a budget surplus, and when expenditure is expected to fall, the government runs a budget deficit. The empirical evidence suggests that the model provides a useful benchmark and that tax‐smoothing behavior can explain about 60 percent of the variability in the Swedish central government budget surplus.     

The tax-rate induced bond substitution hypothesis and the traditional textbook treatment of the relationship between tax-free and taxable bond yields

ABSTRACT

This empirical study posits and tests the ‘tax-rate induced bond substitution hypothesis,’ wherein the propensity for bond buyers to substitute tax-exempt municipal bonds for taxable bonds in their portfolios is hypothesized to be an increasing function of the maximum federal personal income tax rate. This substitution acts to elevate the real interest rate yield on taxable bonds while diminishing it on tax-exempt bonds, ceteris paribus. Two measures of real interest rates are included in the present analysis, ex post real interest rate and ex ante real interest rate. Empirical estimations for the 1981–2018 period provide strong support for the hypothesis. They reveal that the real interest rate yield on high-grade tax-exempt municipal bonds is a decreasing function of the maximum marginal federal personal income tax, whereas the real interest rate yield on taxable ten-year Treasury notes is an increasing function of that same tax rate. We examine the implications of this study and the information underlying it for the traditional formulaic textbook treatment of the relationship between yields on bonds whose interest rate payments are taxable versus those whose interest rate payments are tax exempt and find it is not as dependable as the textbooks would have us believe.     

Tax system and informal economy: a cross-country analysis

This article analyses determinants of informal economy. By using qualitative aspects of tax systems, first, we create a ‘Smithian’ tax system index based on Adam Smith’s four maxims. Then, using this index and other control variables, we study determinants of informal economy. We use unique panel data set that is constructed by using various sources. After taking into account the endogeneity of tax burden and GDP per capita, our results show that ‘Smithian’ tax system index does not significantly affect informal economy. Our results suggest that rule of law, complexity of a tax system and tax burden affect informal economy negatively, while labour market regulations affect positively.     

Empirical evidence for trends in capital markets

The random walk hypothesis of price formation in capital markets is tested against a price-trend hypothesis, using a new test statistic. Empirical results prove that commodity and currency prices are not random but exhibit price-trend behaviour.     

促进信息技术产业发展的税收思考

IT产业是一个比较幼稚的产业,但它对于国民经济而言又具有非常重大的现实意义。从某个角度上说,它在竞争中处于不利的地位,因而有必要对其在税收政策方面给予一定的扶持。扶持的措施是完善税收政策,改革现行的企业所得税,增值税和个人所得税,使我国的税收制度更加有利于IT产业的发展。     

Tax tilting and politics: Some theory and evidence for Latin America

A government budget deficit can exist for at least two possible reasons: tax smoothing and/or tax tilting. Under tax-smoothing, deficits are temporary phenomena resulting from the decision not to vary the tax rate in response to fluctuations in government spending (as a share of output). This is done in order to minimize the distortionary cost of taxes. Tax tilting occurs whenever the government has an incentive to discount the losses to society from taxes at a higher rate than society discounts them; hence it delays taxes or advances spending introducing an upward trend in total government debt. This paper develops a model that implies that tax-tilting tends to increase with political risk. An increase in political risk, measured by the probability of losing power, increases the rate at which the government discounts the future, causing government policy to be relatively more myopic. Hence it delays taxes or advances spending and its deficit increases. Using data from a panel of 19 Latin-American countries for the period 1984–2009, the paper presents estimation results that strongly support the proposition that an increase in political risk increases the degree of tax-tilting.     

Tax smoothing with immigration in an overlapping generations economy

Immigration policy in an overlapping generations economy is politically determined in response to government spending shocks, where the government finances its spending with proportional income taxes and is subject to a balanced budget. The young cohort is always the majority and dictates policy. The equilibrium Markovian strategy allows immigrants when the spending shock is above some threshold and this implies a particular form of tax smoothing.     

构建我国纳税人诉讼制度的理论基础

纳税人诉讼制度是公民财政监督权的具体体现,是实现财政民主与财政法治的重要途径。文章逐次分析了纳税人诉讼制度的政治学、经济学以及法学基础,指出“税收契约”、“税收价格”和“．税收债权债务理论’’都是纳税人诉讼赖以建立的理论基础,而宪法中关于人民主权、财产权、监督权的规定是纳税人诉讼得以建立的直接依据。     

Taxation and corruption: theory and firm-level evidence from Uganda

This article develops a simple framework to analyse the negotiation over bribe and tax payments during the tax collection process. We show that the larger the bribe a firm offers to a tax collector, the larger the tax rebate it gets. More particularly, we show that the negotiation over bribe and tax payments hinges on four other factors: firms’ official liabilities, detection, firms’ negotiation power and red tape costs imposed on firms. Some of the predictions from the theoretical model are tested using firm-level data from Uganda. We find that bribe and tax payments are inversely related, thereby supporting the hypothesis of a negotiation taking place between firms and tax collectors. In particular, a 1% point increase in average bribe payments per employee is associated with a 7% point reduction in average amount of tax payments per employee. Results are robust to various instruments dealing with the endogenous relationship between bribes and taxes.     

以德治税--对依法治税的进一步支持和补充

与“依法治税”的强调相比,税收思想道德建设确实显得相形见绌。也正因为这样,我们依法治税尽管取得了一定的成绩,但离我们预期的目标却相差甚远。通过论证“德”在税收工作全过程(税收立法、税收征纳、税款使用)中存在的重要性来说明“以德治税”是对“依法治税”的支持和补充,从而要求我们在进一步强化依法治税的同时,必须倡导“以德治税”观念。     

The Political Economics of Tax Reform in Chile

This paper explores the political economy at the time of the 2012 tax reform, which paved the way for a radical tax increase in 2014. Both were an explicit response to demands to improve public education. As opposed to the 2014 reform, the 2012 tax adjustment was an unplanned decision made in the wake of a pact of long-term fiscal stability during the government's last year in office and was partially negotiated with student associations and pressure groups. We hypothesise that the existing institutions were not strong enough to meet emerging social demands through formal channels. We will show evidence for the hypothesis that the government's incorporation of students’ demands in its agenda was mainly a response to the role of the media, the fact that it is not difficult for students to organise themselves and express their demands, the support of students’ families and the ruling government's fear of missing out on a second term in office.     

An Analysis of the Corporate Income Tax Policy of Less Developed Countries

Unlike in developed countries, corporate rather than personal tax is the greater source of public finance for less developed countries (LDCs). This paper analyzes the corporate income tax policy for a large panel of LDCs. The analysis shows that although the corporate tax rate has been decreasing, corporate tax revenues have been increasing. Contrary to standard tax competition theory, there is also strong evidence that corporate income taxes are increasing with respect to the LDCs’ openness, as measured by capital mobility. The analysis also shows that the corporate tax rate is increasing with respect to the personal tax rate, as income‐shifting theory predicts.     

Revising the conventional tax-effort principle

The standard methodology on tax-effort (i.e., the ratio of actual tax revenue to its optimal level) is to run a regression of actual tax revenue on countries’ specific (macroeconomic, demographic, geographical, political, social, and institutional) variables. The resulting predicted (fitted) values are then taken to represent the optimal (desired or maximum) level of tax revenue. The crucial issue of tracing out how the optimal tax revenue should be allocated to the fiscal objectives (equity, efficiency) does not seem to be of any interest to the researchers on tax-effort. The present paper argues that the standard methodology is not without faults and needs revising. We demonstrate that an optimal tax system can be safely derived from maximizing a utility function with respect to (in)direct tax rates. The manipulation of the first-order conditions, using a novel mathematical module, leads to an infinite number of optimal direct–indirect tax rates. The selection of the optimal mix of these tax rates is dependent on the country-specific households’ preferences over equity/efficiency, as they are formulated by voters’ volition in election periods. A simulation procedure helps understanding how the optimal tax revenue is chosen and how it can be optimally allocated to fiscal objectives, in the context of a panel data set including a large number of developed and developing countries. Throughout our text, the optimal tax revenue is defined as the sum of the products of the optimal (in)direct tax rates and their corresponding tax bases. In the simple Arrow–Debreu economy, the above sum is shown to be equal to the difference between income and consumption.     

Are corporate tax rates, or countries, converging?

The statutory rate and effective tax rate imposed on corporation income—as well as the dispersion of these rates—began to decline in the 1980s. Is this due to changes in the domestic determinants of corporate taxation or increases in international pressures for tax competition?This paper finds clear evidence that the corporate tax rate is insulated from a country's revenue needs: across countries, there is no association of the expenditure-GDP ratio with the corporate statutory rate and only weak evidence of a positive association with the average rate. There is suggestive, but not definitive, evidence that the domestic role of the corporate tax as a backstop to the individual income tax is important: across countries, there is indeed a strong association between the top individual rate and the top statutory corporate rate.There is intriguing evidence about the role of international competitive pressures on corporate taxation. Measures of openness are negatively associated with statutory corporate rates, although not with revenues collected as a fraction of GDP. Strikingly, larger, more trade-intensive countries do collect more corporate tax, but this may be because these countries are more attractive venues for investment.     

Political budget cycles: Evidence from Italian cities

The introduction of a new real estate taxes in Italy in 2011 provides a natural experiment, which is useful to test for political budget cycles. The new real estate tax allowed discretion to local governments. This generates a random variation in the distance of municipalities from the following elections when they choose the level of the tax rate. We do find substantial evidence of political budget cycles, with municipalities choosing lower tax rates when close to elections. We observe this budget cycle for smaller municipalities where the tax was more likely to be the single most important issue for the local government. Cities close to elections with large deficits did not set lower rates and so did municipalities with a lower average value of properties. Finally, the political budget cycle is stronger in the South.     

Forecasting exchange rates: The multi-state Markov-switching model with smoothing

This paper presents an exchange rate forecasting model which combines the multi-state Markov-switching model with smoothing techniques. The model outperforms a random walk at short horizons and its superior forecastability appears to be robust over different sample spans. Our finding hinges on the fact that exchange rates tend to follow highly persistent trends and accordingly, the key to beating the random walk is to identify these trends. An attempt to link the trends in exchange rates to the underlying macroeconomic determinants further reveals that fundamentals-based linear models generally fail to capture the persistence in exchange rates and thus are incapable of outforecasting the random walk.     

The effects of vertical and horizontal incentives on local tax efforts: evidence from China

Tax effort is a measure of a government’s effort to collect taxes. This study explores what impacts both vertical and horizontal incentives have on local governments’ tax efforts in China. For consistency with the literature, we first include typical economic and institutional factors in our analysis. We find that the effects of economic factors on local tax efforts are significant, but the effects of institutional factors tend to be weak. Fiscal decentralization, as a vertical incentive, has a significantly positive effect on tax efforts at the provincial level. Meanwhile, fiscal interaction, as a horizontal incentive, is also taken into account in a spatial specification to explain tax competition among local governments. The results show that local tax effort in China also depends on the horizontal incentive. Hence, to improve local tax effort, the central government should let the locals have more autonomy in collecting taxes and evaluate local tax effort by referring to tax collection in adjacent provinces simultaneously.