Lifetime Net Average Tax Rates in Australia Since Federation—A Generational Accounting Study

This paper presents estimates of average net payments to government, as a per cent of average lifetime labour earnings, for generations born in Australia since Federation (1901), based on historical data combined with several reasonable future scenarios covering fiscal policy, growth and demographic change. The results shed light on whether certain generations have been treated more favorably by the public sector than others this century. The main conclusion is that the average lifetime net tax rate will, under reasonable'assumptions, be of the order of 37–39 per cent for all currently living generations born since the mid-1930s.     

Indirect Tax Exemptions and the Distribution ot Lifetime Income: A Simulation Analysis*

This paper uses a simulation model to compare the lifetime consequences of a revenue neutral partial shift towards a consumption tax, involving exemptions, with its cross-sectional effects. Exemptions of goods consumed proportionately more by lower income groups reduce the inequality of the distribution of net lifetime consumption by more than in the cross-sectional case. However, the tax shift increases lifetime inequality by more than it increases cross-sectional inequality, and the net effect is that exemptions cannot compensate for the income tax change. Concern with inequality is most appropriately handled by raising transfer payments rather than introducing exemptions.     

Public Debt and Generational Balance in Austria

Based on Austria's fiscal stance in 1995, wecompute the generational accounts for currently living as well as future generations.The results reveal the existence of an intergenerational imbalance in favor of currentlyliving generations. Total public sector liabilities may be more than five times as high asthe officially recorded level of public debt. Without any action, future generations would facelife-time net taxes that are about 65 percent higher than the tax burden of a current newborn.If the government could fully and permanently retain the expenditure cutting andrevenue raising effects of the 1996 fiscal consolidation package and the 1997 pension reform,then it might be able to significantly reduce the intergenerational liabilities. However,enacting both the recent tax reform 2000 and the reform of the family support scheme wouldincrease again the fiscal imbalance and intergenerational bias of fiscal policy in Austria.     

Taxation for the 21st century: the automated payment transaction (APT) tax

This paper examines the desirability and feasibility of replacing the present system of personal and corporate income, sales, excise, capital gains, import and export duties, gift and estate taxes with a single comprehensive revenue neutral Automated Payment Transaction (APT) tax. In its simplest form, the APT tax consists of a flat tax levied on all transactions. The tax is automatically assessed and collected when transactions are settled through the electronic technology of the banking/payments system. The APT tax introduces progressivity through the tax base since the volume of final payments includes exchanges of titles to property and is therefore more highly skewed than the conventional income or consumption tax base. The wealthy carry out a disproportionate share of total transactions and therefore bear a disproportionate burden of the tax despite its flat rate structure. The automated recording of all APT tax payments by firms and individuals eliminates the need to file tax and information returns and creates a degree of transparency and perceived fairness that induces greater tax compliance. Also, the tax has lower administrative and compliance cost. Like all taxes, the APT tax creates new distortions whose costs must be weighted against the benefits obtained by replacing the current tax system.     

对新疆财政收入状况的分析与判断

近年来我国财政收入增长快于经济增长这一现象引起了世人的普遍关注，并由此引发了对财政收入与经济增长是否协调、企业负担是否加重等问题的思考。从税收负担、地方政府可支配财力、转移支付的公平效果进行分析，可得出结论：新疆财政收入增长过快的同时也加重了企业负担，且受新疆特定产业结构和分税制的影响，地方财力有所削弱。对此应当从产业政策和完善转移支付制度等方面进行调整。     

The Fiscal Impact of Immigrants in Austria – A Generational Accounting Analysis

In this paper, we employ generational accounting to analyse the inter-temporal stance of Austrian public finance in 1998 as well as the inter-temporal fiscal impact of immigration to Austria. Immigrants affect inter-temporal fiscal balance in essentially two ways. Firstly, they have a demographic effect in enlarging the population (and thus the tax base) and in altering its age- (and gender-) composition. Secondly, they change the fiscal characteristics of age cohorts due to a representative immigrant exhibiting higher or lower tax and transfer payments than a representative native of the same age and gender. The overall fiscal effect of immigration is found positive, under the assumption that the age and fiscal characteristics of future immigrants resemble those of the current immigrant population in Austria. This is due to a favourable age composition and lower per capita net transfer receipts during retirement age, which compensate for lower per capita net tax payments during working age. However, immigration is not likely to achieve inter-temporal fiscal balance, even if immigration increases or migrants are screened by skill or age.     

养老保险与公共财政领域的代际负担——四种测量模型简

以现收现付为例介绍“政府总财政平衡”、“养老金负债净额”、“代际核算”、“隐性税收”四种模型的基本内涵,以及测量人口老龄化对养老保险体系或财政体系收支平衡的影响,认为社会养老保险必然出现代际不公平,人口老龄化对代际负担的影响测量复杂,代际公平应成为研究人口老龄化影响、评价养老保险长期发展的关键。     

Death and the Keynesian multiplier

The Blanchard-Yaari continuous-time model of overlapping generations is applied to a monetary economy with Keynesian unemployment. It is shown that a positive probability of death increases the short- and long-run multipliers of government spending on output. In the first example this is due to the government deficit being bond-financed, plus the failure of Ricardian equivalence which death implies. In the second, where the government budget remains balanced, it is due to the private accumulation of capital, which has a wealth effect on consumption. However, in the absence of death, this is negated by the higher lifetime tax burden.     

Security Returns and Tax Aversion Bias: Behavioral Responses to Tax Labels

This article studies behavioral responses to taxes in financial markets. It is motivated by recent puzzling empirical evidence of taxable municipal bond yields significantly exceeding the level expected relative to tax exempt bonds. A behavioral explanation is a tax aversion bias, the phenomenon that people perceive an additional burden associated with tax payments. We conduct market experiments on the trading of differently taxed and labeled securities. The data show an initial overvaluation of tax payments that diminishes when subjects gain experience. The tax deduction of expenses is valued more than an equivalent tax exemption of earnings. We find that the persistence of the tax aversion bias critically depends on the quality of feedback. This suggests that tax aversion predominantly occurs in one-time, unfamiliar financial decisions and to a lesser extent in repetitive choices.     

增值税扩围改革有助于减轻服务业税负吗?——基于投入产出表的分析

增值税扩围改革对服务业行业流转税负担的影响同时包含"税率提高的增税效应"与"进项抵扣的减税效应"。利用投入产出表数据分析并测算增值税扩围改革影响各服务业行业流转税负变动的净效应,结果发现:不同服务业行业的税负变化情况差异较大,商务服务业等大多数行业的税负将减轻,但租赁业等部分行业的税负会加重,税改后的增值税税率水平选择与中间投入比率是影响服务业行业税负变动的主要因素。为了优化服务业发展的税收环境,使增值税扩围改革有助于减轻服务业的流转税负,应根据税负平衡点审慎选择服务业行业税改后适用的增值税税率。当前制定的租赁业、交通运输业的试点税率水平偏高,有必要予以降低。     

Tax Reform and Progressivity

The established theory of tax progressivity cannot handle basic tax reform questions, such as whether an increase in personal allowances makes the tax system more progressive, because the core results assume that tax liability is never zero. This paper generalises the core theory to allow for zero tax payments, and applies the new framework to the analysis of allowances, income-related deductions and tax credits. Log concavity of the tax schedule—a property quite distinct from any existing notion of progressivity—emerges as the critical determinant of whether the distribution of the tax burden becomes more progressive as allowances are increased.     

Estate tax and lifetime income inequality

This paper constructs a heterogeneous, intertemporal general equilibrium framework which integrates both intended and unintended bequest motives to examine the long-run effects of an estate tax on the inequality of lifetime income. The results are ambiguous in general and sensitive to the type of transfer motive involved. We find that in the purely intended bequest case, an estate tax increases the steady-state inequality of net lifetime income in the case where people's elasticity of intertemporal substitution is greater than one. However, in the purely unintended bequest case, the effect of an estate tax on inequality is dependent on the probability of survival.     

THE LOOMING U.S. EXTERNAL DEBT: HOW SERIOUS IS IT?

This article examines the state of U.S. external debt accumulation, especially the rising burden of interest payments. It points out that the favorable yield differential between U.S. external assets and liabilities may be declining at the same time the United States has become the world's largest international debtor. The favorable yield differential has enabled the United States, which became a net debtor in 1987, to avoid making net interest payments on its international debt until 1994. However, servicing the increasing U.S. net international debt is likely to be a much greater burden in the future as the favorable yield gap wanes while net debt continues to grow.     

Distributional Effects of a Wealth Tax under Lifetime‐Dynastic Income Concepts*

Annual wealth tax is back on the policy agenda, but discussion of its effect is not well informed. When standard methodology is used and wealth‐tax burdens are measured against annual individual income, it is found that a large share of the tax burden falls on people with low incomes. In this study, we use rich Norwegian administrative data to discuss the distributional effects of wealth tax under several different income concepts, ultimately measuring income over the lifetime of family dynasties. When measured against lifetime income and lifetime income in dynasties, wealth tax is mostly borne by high‐income taxpayers and is seen as clearly redistributive.     

Generational conflict and education politics: Implications for growth and welfare

This study considers the politics of public education and its impact on economic growth and welfare across generations. We employ probabilistic voting to demonstrate the generational conflict regarding taxes and spending and show that aging shifts the tax burden from the retired to the working generation, reduces public education spending, and ultimately slows economic growth. We subsequently consider a legal constraint that aims to boost education spending: a spending floor for education. This constraint stimulates economic growth but creates a trade-off between current and future generations’ welfare. Finally, the quantitative implications of our results are explored by calibrating the model to the Japanese economy.     

Capital Taxation, Tobin's q and Overlapping Generations

This study examines the effect of capital taxation on the long-term equilibrium in an intertemporal model, incorporating overlapping generations of the Blanchard–Weil type and value-maximizing firms with adjustment costs in investment. I demonstrate that an increase in capital taxation raises the steady-state expected lifetime utility of an agent born after the tax increase, provided the intergenerational redistribution effect achieved through lowering the rate of return is greater than that achieved through the tax revenue effect owing to the reduced capital–labour ratio, and that an increased ITC rate would not necessarily raise the steady-state lifetime utility of all agents.
JEL Classification Numbers: D91, D92, E62, H24, H25.     

Tax Policy and Human Capital Formation with Public Investment in Education

This paper studies the effects of distortionary taxes and public investment in an endogenous growth OLG model with knowledge transmission. Fiscal policy affects growth in two respects: first, work time reacts to variations of prospective tax rates and modifies knowledge formation; second, public spending enhances labour efficiency but also stimulates physical capital through increased savings. It is shown that Ramsey-optimal policies reduce savings due to high tax rates on young generations, and are not necessarily growth-improving with respect to a pure private system. Non-Ramsey policies that shift the burden on adults are always growth-improving due to crowding-in effects: the welfare of all generations is unambiguously higher with respect to a private system, and there generally exists a continuum of non-optimal tax rates under which long-run growth and welfare are higher than with the Ramsey-optimal policy.     

Dividend taxation and intertemporal tax arbitrage

We analyze the effects of changes in dividend tax policy using a life-cycle model of the firm, in which new firms first access equity markets, then grow internally, and finally pay dividends when they have reached steady state. We find that unanticipated permanent changes in tax rates have only small effects on aggregate investment, since macroeconomic dynamics are dominated by mature firms for which dividend taxation is not distortionary. Anticipated or temporary dividend tax changes, on the other hand, create incentives for firms to engage in inter-temporal tax arbitrage so as to reduce investors' tax burden. For example, a temporary tax cut – the type most likely to be enacted by policymakers – induces firms to accelerate dividend payments while tax rates are low, which reduces their cash holdings and makes them capital-constrained when large investment opportunities arise. This can significantly lower aggregate investment for periods after the tax cut.     

Disability insurance and environmental tax policy in a zero net emissions society

This study aims to show the importance of disability insurance from an environmental policy perspective. Within the framework of an overlapping generations model, we derive the emissions tax rate required to achieve zero net pollution. Our model implies that the emissions tax rate is always lower in the presence of disability insurance than it is in the absence of disability insurance. The results suggest that disability insurance can be used as an instrument for increasing gross domestic product performance when the government implements a zero net emissions policy.     

How to Make the Japanese Public Pension System Reliable and Workable

This paper has two objectives. The first is to identify current problems in Japan's pension administration. The chief problem is a weak governance structure. In particular, the current governance structure ignores the role of pension participants. A rigorous division and clear assignment of responsibilities to each of the pension participants, the Social Insurance Agency, and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is urgently needed. Given rapid demographic change, the second objective is to consider the case for full tax financing of the National Basic Pension. It is estimated that the net burden would vary across different cohorts, but we demonstrate that the net burden can be smoothed across different cohorts. This result is quite different from that in the 2008 Interim Report of the Japanese National Council on Social Security.