Structure and Design of the Fringe Benefits Tax

The aim of this article is to provide an introduction for economists to the legal structure of the fringe benefits tax legislation. The article is not concerned with the analysis of the provisions of the legislation, but, rather with the design rules employed by the drafters in implementing the Government's policy to impose a tax on employers on non-cash fringe benefits provided to employees.     

Trade Unions, Collective Voice and Fringe Benefits*

The exit/voice model of the labour market predicts that unionized workers will enjoy a greater level of fringe benefits, both absolutely and as a share of total compensation, than non-unionists. This is because unions can, through the medium of collective voice, communicate to management a picture of the preferences of the median worker. In non-union settings, however, management responds to the perceived preferences of the young, mobile workers at the hiring margin and these typically place a low priority on fringe benefits relative to money wages. Using data from the A ustralian Longitudinal Survey it is found that the hypothesis is supported by the evidence for Australia.     

Optimal Capital Income Taxation with Means‐tested Benefits

This paper studies the interaction between capital income taxation and a means‐tested age pension. Our results document that the existence of a social insurance program financed from general revenue puts an upward pressure on the optimal tax rate. We also show that there is a negative relation between taper (benefit‐reduction) and optimal capital income tax rates. The potential welfare gain from optimizing capital taxation in the presence of a universal retirement transfer system is relatively higher. However, when the transfer is substantially means tested, the gain is lower, because the means test effectively operates as a tax on retirement capital.     

Costs of Taxation and Benefits of Public Goods with Multiple Taxes and Goods

The fact that raising taxes can increase taxed labor supply through income effects is frequently and erroneously used to justify greater public good provision than indicated by traditional, compensated analyses. We develop a model including multiple public goods and taxes and derive measures of the marginal benefits of public goods and the Marginal Cost of Funds (MCF) using both compensated and uncompensated measures. We confirm that the desirability of tax‐financed public projects is independent of the method used. An important innovation is to show that the benefits of public goods must be adjusted by a benefit multiplier not previously seen in the literature if an uncompensated MCF is used.     

Optimal Taxation: The Design of Child‐Related Cash and In‐Kind Benefits

Abstract. In this paper, we empirically derive the welfare function that guarantees that the current German tax and transfer system for single women is optimal. In particular, we compare the welfare function conditional on the presence and age of children and assess how recent reforms of in‐kind childcare transfers affect the welfare function. Our analysis is based on a discrete model of optimal taxation. We apply this framework using microsimulation and microeconometric techniques. In general, we find that marginal welfare weights are relatively high for non‐working single women. Further, we show that the reform of in‐kind childcare transfers is only optimal if society increases the marginal welfare weights for the working single women.     

Housing and Income Inequality in Europe: Distributional Effects of Non-Cash Income From Imputed Rents

This article uses survey data to estimate non-cash income from imputed rents, using a consistent methodology for all countries to assemble comparable statistics that allow for a valid inter-country comparison. We can confirm a significant impact of non-cash income and find an inequality-decreasing effect for the unconditional income distribution which highly correlates with the proportion of owner-occupiers in the respective countries. However, aggregated inequality measures are not suited to analyze the increase in the conditional income inequality between owner-occupiers and renters, who do not obtain income from imputed rents by definition. Therefore, we apply a reweighting decomposition that controls for the heterogeneous housing characteristics among European countries and allows us to decompose the distributional changes into a part that is explained by the proportion of tenure types and household size and a remaining part that reflects the relative dispersion of imputed rents along the income distribution.     

税收信用--现代税收思想的新理念

市场经济是法治经济，也是信用经济。市场经济条件下，税收秩序需要法律“有形之手”和信用“无形之手”共同维护。税收信用包括税收立法、守法、执法、司法信用和用税信用，涉及人大、税务、法院、财政等多个主体，涵盖经济信用和政治信用。发展我国税收信用，必须从法律保障、文化基础、信用机制和信息渠道等多个方面入手。     

论国际税收竞争与中国税法之完善

国际税收竞争导致全球所得税税率不断攀低,这为跨国公司国际避税创造了条件,同时减少了国家的财政收入。我国应进一步完善税法,在吸引外资和提供税收优惠、让渡税收利益中寻找平衡点,既要有利于本国经济发展,又应避免对他国税基造成不当侵害。     

资源税在中国矿业税费金制度中的功能定位

与矿业活动有关的各项赋税方案的一揽子财政制度的总和构成了矿业税费金制度,是国家管理、调控、干预矿产资源开发利用的重要手段.资源税是以各种应税自然资源为课税对象、为了调节资源级差收入并体现国有资源有偿使用而征收的税种.资源税在中国矿业税费金制度中应当具备主导功能、杠杆功能、调控功能.但是,资源税与矿产资源补偿费性质歧义容易导致税费重复征收、资源税税率偏低难以客观体现级差地租、资源税课税范围过窄造成非应税资源被掠夺式开发、经济全球化对资源税征收提出新要求等问题,影响了资源税功能的发挥.在分析中国矿业税费金制度、尤其是资源税所面临的主要问题的基础上,提出了资源税在中国矿业税费金制度中功能定位的政策建议.     

最优税收理论与我国税制改革

在对最优税收理论进行系统研究的基础上,将最优税收理论与我国的实际相结合,提出了优化我国税制改革的建议,力图设计出一套比较符合国情的最优税制,从而更好地促进我国的经济发展。     

Taxation and Tournaments

This paper analyzes the effects of progressive taxes on labor supply and income distribution in the context of the rank‐order tournament model originally developed by Lazear and Rosen (1981). We show conditions under which a more progressive tax schedule will cause so large general equilibrium effects that the inequality in disposable income will actually increase. We also show that a non‐zero redistributive tax is always optimal if society's welfare function displays inequality aversion; this result always holds, regardless of behavioral responses and general equilibrium effects.     

论税收伦理

最适税收理论运用了福利经济学的工具,在传统的税制设计目标的论述中增加了分析的力度。但是,它拘泥于经济学上的功利主义福利分析方法,仅仅涉及一个人怎样在不同的时间里分配他的满足,而不关心满足的总量怎样在个人之间进行分配;仅仅考虑人的需求,而不考虑环境的需要,助长了税收经济主义的倾向,导致了生态环境的蓄意破坏,税收公平性的失调。税收效率固然重要,但正义和可持续性也必不可少。必须在生态哲学观基础上研究我国的税收制度,才能促使经济、社会和环境的和谐发展。我们的税收命题不仅仅是"取之于民,用之于民",而应该是"取之于民和自然,用之于民和自然"。     

Taxation without commitment

This paper considers a Ramsey model of linear capital and labor income taxation in which a benevolent government cannot commit ex-ante to a sequence of policies for the future. In this setup, if the government is forced to keep budget balance in every period, then it may not be able to sustain zero capital taxes in the long run, as shown in Benhabib and Rustichini (J Econ Theory 77:231–259, 1997) and Phelan and Stachetti (Econometrica 69:1491–1518, 2001). However, (Dominguez in J Econ Theory 135:159–170, 2007) shows that if the government is allowed to borrow and lend to households, the optimal capital income tax still converges to zero in the long run, as long as the value of defaulting is independent of the level of government debt. This paper provides a game theoretic setup with government debt where the value of the worst equilibrium only depends on the initial level of capital and can be determined in advance. This implies that under our assumptions the best sustainable equilibrium has zero capital taxes in the long run, even in the absence of government commitment.     

Neutral Property Taxation

A major difficulty in implementing land/site value taxation is imputing the land value of built‐on sites. The literature has focused on two alternatives. The first, residual site value, measures postdevelopment site value as property value less structure value, with structure value measured as depreciated construction costs. Residual site value would be relatively easy to estimate, but a residual site value tax system, which taxes land value before development and residual site value after development at the same rate is distortionary, discouraging density. The second, raw site value, measures postdevelopment site value as “what the land would be worth were there no building on the site (though in fact there is).” Raw site value taxation is neutral (does not distort the timing and density of development), but the estimation of postdevelopment raw site value would be complex so that assessment would likely be less fair and more arbitrary, contentious, and prone to abuse. This paper asks the question: Is it not possible to design a property tax system (taxation of predevelopment land value, postdevelopment structure value, and postdevelopment site value at possibly different rates) that employs the administratively simpler residual definition of postdevelopment site value and achieves neutrality? Under restrictive assumptions and subject to an important qualification, the paper provides an affirmative answer, and characterizes the tax rates that achieve neutrality. It also briefly discusses issues of practical implementation.     

论税收依据

以往评鉴税收依据的学说都存在一定缺陷。应从考察组织存在的必要性和国家起源入手，建立以国家类型、国家与公民关系和不同的观察视角为要素的分析框架。探究税收产生和存在的原因乃因为它是社会组织弥补运行费用的交易成本最低的方式，是国家作为社会组织的最高形态运行的内在经济逻辑要求。     

网络交易征税简论

随着互联网的发展,网络购物已成为人们日常生活用品采购最为便捷的基本方式,因而,网络交易日益受网民的青睐.然而,任何商品的交易都须向国家纳税,由于我国目前征税范围尚未把网络交易纳入其中,致使网络交易征税成为"免税区域".对我国网络交易现状及征税所面临的问题进行探讨.提出网络交易征收的应急对策,以能完善税收管理体系.