A proposal to apply the Kiwi-VAT to insurance services in the European Union

In the spirit of the European Commission’s call for a simpler, more robust and efficient VAT system, this article proposes to integrate exempt insurance services into the European VAT, and to abolish the discriminatory, excise-type insurance premium taxes levied by the various Member States. The current VAT exemption (no taxation of insurance services and no credit for the VAT on inputs) is administratively complex and economically distortionary. Instead, the value added of property and casualty insurance companies can be taxed on a transactions basis by applying the VAT to insurance premiums (creditable by VAT-liable businesses) and allowing a presumptive tax credit for the VAT imputable to payouts (plus a credit for the actual VAT on purchases). The presumptive tax credit should be taxed at the level of business recipients, but individuals would receive the VAT along with indemnity payments without having to file a return. Exceptionally, the tax-credit VAT would not be applied to life and health insurance premiums, but insurers would be taxed on an accounts basis on the sum of wages and business cash flow.     

Value-added tax options for India

The pressures of aggregate revenue, the requirement of a reduced role for customs duties for the liberalization of the economy, and the complexity and strains of the current system together point clearly toward the desirability of tax reform in India. Since domestic indirect taxes provide the major source of revenue, they deserve special attention. This paper argues that India would benefit from moving toward a system of value-added taxation (VAT) and focuses on the way in which a VAT (or VATs) can be best introduced into India given the country's federal structure. Three different options are distinguished: a central VAT, dual VAT, and states' VAT. We argue that the first is politically infeasible, that the second represents the best way forward in the short term, and that the third deserves consideration as a long-run option. Special attention is paid to the problems that would arise under either a states' or a dual VAT with regard to taxing interstate trade.     

增值税征收范围与免税范围探讨

从税制原理上看,增值税征收范围应覆盖所有商品和劳务。然而,出于公平、技术、成本等原因,开征增值税的国家普遍对部分商品或服务免征增值税。EU、OECD国家的增值税实践为其他各国的增值税改革提供了重要启示,在借鉴这些国家的成熟经验及结合我国实际情况的基础上,建议我国未来增值税征收范围与免税范围的总体目标为覆盖所有商品和劳务并尽量减少免税项目。     

VAT and agriculture: lessons from Europe

Little has been written about the treatment of agriculture under the value added tax (VAT). This article attempts to fill the void by surveying and evaluating the situation in the Member States of the European Union (EU) and some other countries. Farmers are often exempted from VAT for administrative and political reasons. But this means that the VAT on their inputs cannot be ‘washed out’ through the tax deduction/credit mechanism. It then has to be borne by the farmers themselves or becomes an indeterminate and capricious element in consumer prices. To compensate farmers for the uncompensated VAT on inputs, the EU has devised a flat-rate scheme that permits them to charge a presumptive rate (approximately equal to the effective VAT rate on sector-wide inputs) on their sales to taxable agro-processing firms which, in turn, are permitted to take a deduction for this flat-rate addition from the VAT on their sales. Obviously, the flat-rate scheme is an arbitrary way of trying to achieve equal treatment between exempt and taxable farmers and between exempt farm products and other taxable goods and services. Full taxation, subject to the general threshold, appears to be the preferred choice.     

关于我国房地产税收问题的若干思考

随着高房价问题的日益突出,通过对个人住房征收房地产税抑制房价成为一个热点话题。从国际经验和国内试点看,房地产税的主要功能是为基层政府提供稳定的财政收入,难以作为调控房价的手段。房地产税无论是从价计征、从量计征,还是分等级定额征收,均有利有弊,我国应审慎考虑各方因素和现实情况,斟酌选择计税依据。从税收征管的简易性考虑,按房地产面积从量计征是现阶段房地产税改革的优选,同时应尽量缩小减免税的范围。     

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.     

Zero‐Rating versus Cash Transfers under the VAT

To reduce the tax burden on the poor, nearly every VAT system allows for special treatment of certain goods or services. Zero‐rating the supply of certain foodstuffs is a prominent example of this practice. Using data on South Africa, this paper considers whether taxing foodstuffs alongside compensating cash transfers may be preferred to zero‐rating foodstuffs in a developing country context. The results show that cash transfers may be preferred if all the additional revenue from eliminating the zero rate can be earmarked and government is perfectly efficient. In the likely absence of earmarking and perfect efficiency, developing countries may need to apply special treatment to some foodstuffs to protect the poor. If this is the case, it is proposed that zero‐rating can be preferred to the exemption of certain foodstuffs.     

Two-Rate Property Tax Effects on Land Development

Economists have long understood that the conventional property tax causes the housing stock to be smaller than it would be in the presence of a nondistortionary tax such as a land or site value tax. This article brings together the results from models of housing development timing and structural density with the results of a modern model of a graded property tax in an urban setting. The combination of results is used to investigate the effects of a communitys movement from a property tax to a two-rate tax system where land is taxed at a higher rate than structures. The conditions under which increasing reliance on a land or site value tax will increase housing structural density and speed of development are identified and examined. Policy implications are drawn.     

Opting for Opting‐In? An Evaluation of the European Commission's Proposals for Reforming VAT on Financial Services*

This paper provides a legal and economic analysis of the European Commission's recent proposals for reforming the application of VAT to financial services, with particular focus on their ‘third pillar’, under which firms would be allowed to opt in to taxation on exempt insurance and financial services. From a legal perspective, we show that the proposals’‘first and second pillars’ would give rise to considerable interpretative and qualification problems, resulting in as much complexity and legal uncertainty as the current regime. Equally, an option to tax could potentially follow significantly different legal designs, which would give rise to discrepancies in the application of the option amongst Member States of the European Union (EU). On the economic side, we show that quite generally, when firms cannot coordinate their behaviour, they have an individual incentive to opt in on business‐to‐business (B2B) transactions, but not on business‐to‐consumer (B2C) transactions. We also show that opting‐in eliminates the cost disadvantage that EU financial services firms face in competing with foreign firms for B2B sales. But these results do not hold if firms can coordinate their behaviour. An estimate of the upper bound on the amount of tax revenue that might be lost from allowing opting‐in is provided for a number of EU countries.     

房产税对宏观经济的影响效应研究

本文扩展Dong et al.(2019)通过企业家对住房地产和实体经济投资进行资产组合决策,把房价、投资、消费和产出等重要经济指标纳入主流新凯恩斯框架,考虑银行能否区分贷款是投入实体经济还是房地产业两种情形,分析了房产税引入住房市场前后对宏观经济的影响效应。研究结果表明:开征房产税对房地产开发投资、房价和新住房生产具有明显的抑制作用,对实体经济投资则具有正挤入效应增加和负抵押效应减少的双重效应。从短期看,当银行无法区分企业贷款是投入实体经济还是房地产业时,因前期的负抵押效应大于正挤入效应,总实物资本减少,产出下降;当可清晰区分二者时,负抵押效应变为小于正挤入效应,总实物资本增加,产出上升。鉴于推出房产税对宏观经济影响较为复杂,应充分权衡利弊,采取必要辅助措施趋利避害。     

房产税对宏观经济的影响效应研究

本文扩展Dong et al.(2019)通过企业家对住房地产和实体经济投资进行资产组合决策,把房价、投资、消费和产出等重要经济指标纳入主流新凯恩斯框架,考虑银行能否区分贷款是投入实体经济还是房地产业两种情形,分析了房产税引入住房市场前后对宏观经济的影响效应。研究结果表明:开征房产税对房地产开发投资、房价和新住房生产具有明显的抑制作用,对实体经济投资则具有正挤入效应增加和负抵押效应减少的双重效应。从短期看,当银行无法区分企业贷款是投入实体经济还是房地产业时,因前期的负抵押效应大于正挤入效应,总实物资本减少,产出下降;当可清晰区分二者时,负抵押效应变为小于正挤入效应,总实物资本增加,产出上升。鉴于推出房产税对宏观经济影响较为复杂,应充分权衡利弊,采取必要辅助措施趋利避害。     

VAT attacks!

Like the theory of the second best that the 2006 congress marks, the value added tax (VAT) is now fifty years old. Judged by the extent and speed of its spread around the world, and the revenue that it raises, the VAT would seem to have been a remarkable success. Over the last few years, however, it has come under a series of attacks. This paper considers three of the most prominent of these. One is the fear (raised mainly in the United States) that the VAT actually does too good a job of raising tax revenue—which raises the empirical question of whether it has indeed proved as effective a source of revenue as its proponents claim and its opponents fear. The second is the view that the VAT does a bad job of taxing the informal sector—and that tariffs might consequently be a better revenue-raising instrument for many developing countries. The third attack is the most literal, by criminals rather than theorists: in the European Union and elsewhere, sophisticated VAT fraud, targeting its refund provisions, has become a serious concern. The paper also argues, more generally, that the many unanswered questions concerning the VAT reflect an unfortunate disconnect between the development of the tax itself and of second best tax analysis. I am grateful to Ben Lockwood and Stephen Smith for allowing me to draw on our joint work, and to Vidar Christiansen, Sijbren Cnossen, Isaias Coelho, Alain Jousten, Victoria Perry, and Emil Sunley for many helpful comments and suggestions. Views and errors remain mine alone, and should not be attributed to the International Monetary Fund.     

耿书海:推动物流振兴规划真正落实

有关部门将抓紧完善物流企业营业税差额纳税试点办法,进一步扩大试点范围;完善土地使用税政策,减轻物流企业负担;在进行试点的基础上,全面推广物流行业营业税改增值税政策     

Optimality of the Friedman rule in economies with distorting taxes

We find conditions for the Friedman rule to be optimal in three standard monetary models. Our main contribution is to shed light on two issues in the literature. First, the conventional view maintains that when money is a final good, its services should be taxed. Moreover, if money demand is interest-inelastic, its services should be taxed heavily. We show that this view is incorrect. Second, there is an ongoing controversy about whether the optimality of the Friedman rule is connected to the intermediate goods result from public finance. We resolve this controversy by showing a deep connection between these results.     

Optimal tax base with administrative fixed costs

This note characterizes the optimal base for commodity taxation in the presence of administrative fixed costs varying across goods. For low tax rates, the optimal base only comprises commodities whose discouragement index is greater than the ratio of their administrative costs to the tax they yield. An illustration with UK data shows that a category of goods should be taxed only if the revenue generated on this category is at least ten times greater than its administrative fixed cost. The cost imputable to the category of goods taxed at the standard rate would be at most 6 percent of total VAT revenue. The administration cost associated with categories of goods currently tax-free could justify exemption.     

Taxes

This is a compendium of notes on taxes. Section 2 presents a general tax scheme. It is a tax on value added by labour and capital that does not favour one or the other. Section 3 contrasts taxation of business income for pass-through entities and corporations. Section 4 discusses property taxes as taxes on housing services and so a form of income tax. Section 5 turns to wealth taxes. The closing Section 6 attempts to explain why people donate to nonprofits but minimise tax payments to governments, even though governments and nonprofits engage in many of the same activities.     

Slowing Fossil Fuel Extraction: A Role for Taxation of Exports,Capital Gains and Interest Income

This paper develops a model of a growing open economy rich in non‐renewable resources, the extraction of which negatively impacts domestic productivity and whose sector competes with final production for capital. We analyse how tax rates on capital gains and interest income and the time trend of an export revenue tax rate could slow the extraction of resources for export. We find that taxing capital gains and interest income at the same rate and setting an export revenue tax rate to decline at the marginal social cost of extraction would defer extraction. An export revenue tax rate need not fall over time to curb depletion if capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than interest income, which is second best to taxing asset returns at the same rate when the resources sector competes for capital.     

对物业税公平功能的思考

物业税是一种财产税,因而在理论上具有调节贫富差距的公平功能。但实践中物业税能否发挥该功能,取决于其税负归宿是否具有累进性。在当前我国贫富差距持续拉大、现行税制体系公平功能缺失的背景下,应充分重视物业税的公平功能。以下政策建议将有助于物业税公平功能的发挥:将土地价值与房产价值合并为物业税课税对象;统一内外资企业房地产税制,实现平等国民待遇;扩大物业税征税范围;实行"双轨制"税率;统一以市场评估价值为计税依据。     

完善结构性减税政策的着力点与路径选择

根据目前我国所面临的新形势、新任务,完善结构性减税政策的着力点应该放在三个方面:针对特定税种进行有增有减的调整,促进税制结构的优化;针对特定群体实行减税或增税政策,实现税收负担的公平;将结构性减税与经济结构调整对接,助推经济结构的优化。立足于这三大着力点,完善结构性减税政策的基本路径选择为:推进增值税扩围改革;调整消费税;减免部分进口环节税收;实行综合与分类相结合的个人所得税制;进一步完善企业所得税优惠政策;深化个人住房房产税改革;全面推广资源税;研究开征环境保护税等新税种。