论适于中国国情的环境税模式选择

环境税是政府实现环境政策目标、构建资源节约型与环境友好型税制的有效手段之一.从环境税在整个税制体系中的地位看,环境税可分为独立型、融入型和税费并存型三种模式.本文比较分析了三种环境税模式的特点及实施条件;在理论与实证考察的基础上,就融入型环境税模式更有利于税收公平与效率目标的实现,也更符合中国现实进行了论证,并提出在现行税制体系中,引进融入型环境税模式,构建绿色税制体系的基本思路.     

工业水污染税税率测算模型的构建与应用

］本文探索建立水污染税税率测算模型并应用设计水污染税率。首先,在比较国内外水污染税费制度的基础上,借鉴环境税和环境保护相关理论,将水污染经济损失模型与内梅罗修正指数模型相结合构建水污染税测算模型;第二,采用水污染税测算模型测算了2010年河北省水污染税税率水平应为14元/吨废水。这一标准远高于现行对每吨废水平均征收030元的标准,验证了我国水污染征收标准远不足以弥补治污成本的现状,应在环境税费改税改革中重新设计征税依据和税率水平。     

Efficient Dynamic Pollution Taxation in an Uncertain Environment

This paper analyzes efficient pollution taxation within a stochastic model of endogenous growth. Pollution is a by-product of production and causes disutility. Furthermore, the productivity which results from environmental quality is uncertain. This reflects e.g. uncertain capital depreciation induced by natural disasters like hurricanes or floods. This uncertainty is shown to raise an ambiguous impact on the optimal pollution level as well as on optimal environmental taxation. Market equilibrium turns out to be suboptimal, since the households mis-perceive their individual impact on pollution. Conditions for welfare maximizing pollution taxation are stated and it is shown that a direct pollution tax is not appropriate to yield Pareto-optimal growth. Instead, a linear capital income tax together with a linear abatement subsidy build an efficient tax scheme, if secondarily the governmental budget is balanced. Moreover, an increase in the riskiness of environmental productivity may even lead to an increase in the optimal pollution level and to a decrease in optimal environmental taxation, depending predominantly on the preference parameters.      

我国绿色税收政策效果分析及改革设想

我国在经济快速发展过程中出现了许多社会问题,其中环境污染是最严峻的问题之一。税收政策在促进环境改善方面具有十分明显的作用,通过制定税收政策引导企业经营方式的改变,从而实现环境改善已是各国的通行作法。与欧美国家相比我国税制的绿化程度很低,且不成体系。与生态环境有关的税收政策,散见于资源税、消费税、企业所得税等税种中,许多仍以费的形式存在,有较大的空间。应在借鉴国外绿色税收政策成功作法和经验的基础上,增加现行税种的环境保护功能,实行专门的环保税种,实行费改税等。     

关于完善我国环保型税收政策的探讨

环保型税收在环境保护方面具有不可替代的作用。随着我国经济发展环境问题日益凸现,运用税收手段解决环境问题已成为各国通行的做法。鉴于我国目前以流转税为主,经济发展水平不高,所以不能完全照搬西方的做法,但西方发达国家生态税有许多值得我们借鉴的成功经验。我国税制中与生态环境有关的政策,散见于资源税、消费税、企业所得税等几个税种中,有些仍以费的形式存在,有较大的空间。建议应增加现行税种的环境保护内涵,实行专门的环保税种,实行费改税等。     

Excess Burden of Taxation and Environmental Policy Mix with a Consumer‐Friendly Firm

This study examines the environmental policy mix of tradable emission permits and emission taxes in a duopoly model with a consumer‐friendly firm. We analyse the interplay of the two policies and the welfare consequences in the presence of excess burden of taxation. We show that an emission tax can be redundant when both the excess burden of taxation and the degree of consumer friendliness are insignificant. However, when the excess burden of taxation is significant, tradable permits policy with tax treatment should be applied to enhance welfare in the presence of a consumer‐friendly firm. Finally, under the tax revenue‐neutral case where the excess burden of taxation does not matter, the environmental policy mix is also efficient if the degree of consumer friendliness is sufficiently high.     

论我国环境税收体系的重构

我国现行的环境保护的税、费措施存在许多不足:排污收费的随意性很大,不能充分发挥保护环境的作用,缺乏专门系统的环境保护税,环境保护的目的难以实现。为此,必须完善现行的环境保护税收措施,开征环境保护税,以重构我国的环境税收体系,加强对环境的保护,促进经济与环境的协调发展。     

税收征纳博弈及其行为解析

税收漏洞是促使税制完备与系统一致性的推动力。在不完备的税收制度与非一致性的税收环境中，纳税人与税收征管主体双方都必然存在对策筹划与行为抉择的战略空间。正是在这一对策均衡与非均衡的不断演绎过程中，税制才得以不断完善，从而达到系统一致性的理想境界。基于上述认识，本文着重在宏观层面上对税收漏洞问题进行行为解释与策略均衡分析，旨在从原理上构建一个税收征纳的博弈格局和对策框架。     

环境成本的内部化与环境税制变迁

本文分析了环境成本产生的经济学根源,进而分析了环境成本内部化的途径。研究发现,政府环境税收政策的实施对企业利润的影响决定了环境成本内部化的途径。在完善的环境税制下,征收环境税可以促使污染企业外部成本内部化,因而环境税制是一种有效的环境经济政策。中国还没有开征专门的环境税,目前的税制在保护环境上发挥的作用不明显,有必要开征专门的环境税。本文运用制度变迁理论探讨了中国环境税制变迁的路径。     

Environmental taxes with heterogeneous consumers: an application to energy consumption in France

This paper constructs a model with four groups of households who have preferences over labor supply, consumption of polluting (energy related) and non-polluting (non-energy) goods, and emissions. It quantifies the model for the French economy and computes its optimal tax equilibria under nine second-best tax regimes. We find that the redistributive role of environmental taxes requires the polluting goods to be taxed at a rate much below their marginal social damage. These goods may even require an outright subsidy if the society values equality ‘a lot’. Secondly, if environmental taxes that have an exclusively externality-correcting role, they benefit all types—although the gains are rather modest. The gains and losses become more substantial when environmental taxes have a redistributive role as well. Third, setting the environmental tax at its Pigouvian level, rather than its optimal externality-correcting-cum-redistributive level, benefits the high-income group at the expense of the low-income groups. Fourth, nonlinear taxation of polluting goods, and nonlinear commodity taxation in general, is a powerful redistributive mechanism. Fifth, introducing environmental taxes in the current French tax system, with its suboptimal income taxes, results in substantial welfare gains for the highest income group and a sizable loss for the least well-off persons.     

Health effects and optimal environmental taxes

The literature on environmental taxation in the presence of pre-existing distortionary taxes has shown that interactions with these distortions tend to raise the cost of an environmental tax, and thus that the optimal environmental tax is less than marginal environmental damages. A recent paper by Schwartz and Repetto (2000) challenges this finding, arguing that the health benefits from reduced pollution will also interact with pre-existing taxes, and may cause the optimal environmental tax to exceed marginal damages.Schwartz and Repetto’s analysis represented health effects implicitly in the utility function. In contrast, the present paper explicitly represents health effects in an analytically tractable general equilibrium model. This model shows that interactions with health effects from pollution actually will tend to reduce the optimal environmental tax, contradicting, Schwartz and Repetto’s conclusion. This demonstrates the usefulness of explicitly modeling health effects, and it reinforces the general notion that tax-interactions tend to raise the costs of an environmental tax.     

Green Throughput Taxation: Environmental and Economic Consequences

According to optimal taxation theory, raw materials should be taxed to capture the embedded scarcity rent in their value. To reduce both natural resource use and the corresponding emissions, or the throughput in the economic system, the best policy may be a tax on material inputs. As a first approach to throughput taxation, this paper considers a tax on intermediates in the framework of a dynamic computable general equilibrium model with environmental feedbacks. To balance the budget, payroll taxes are reduced. As a result, welfare indicators as material consumption and leisure time consumption are reduced, while on the other hand all the environmental indicators improve.     

税收文化刍议

本文从文化的内含出发,界定了税收文化的内涵和内容;从税收文化的历史和现实出发,重点提出了重建税收文化的内容--重建纳税人理念、征税人理念、用税人理念.     

The Role of Information Provision as a Policy Instrument to Supplement Environmental Taxes

This paper examines, within a dynamic framework, the role of information provision as a policy instrument to supplement environmental taxation. Several products are responsible for health as well as environmental damages. Many consumers do not possess the required information to optimally substitute away from these products. However, as the stock of information regarding the negative effects of these products builds up, an increasing fraction of consumers behaves optimally. The government uses two policy instruments, environmental taxation and information provision. We show that as the accumulated stock of information increases, the optimal tax rate declines over time. Information provision can shift market demand towards environmentally friendly goods over time, and thus reduce the required level of the tax rate. Our results provide strong evidence in support of information campaigns as a policy instrument to supplement traditional environmental policies.     

Environmental Tax Policy and Long-Run Economic Growth

This paper focuses on two competing effects of environmental taxation on long-run economic growth. One is a negative force, which hampers production; the other is a positive force, which increases the level of environmental quality bequeathed to future generations. The analysis shows that there exists a critical level of the tax that balances one force with the other. If the tax is initially set below (or above) the critical level, then raising the tax rate is beneficial (or harmful) to economic growth.
JEL Classification Numbers: D62, D91, H26, O11, O30, Q20     

The perverse effect of environmental regulation on emissions: The role of product-mix changes

We study the effect of environmental regulation (taxation) on emissions when the only available abatement method consists of product-mix changes. Firms choose to produce one or both varieties of a product—a pollution-intensive (dirty) and a non-pollution-intensive (green)—and compete in a differentiated Cournot duopoly. We characterize the equilibrium market structure as a function of the tax rate and show that increases in the tax can promote product-mix changes that lead to a jump in emissions for some tax range, an effect we call the perverse effect of taxation. Our work emphasizes the key role horizontal product differentiation in this process and shows that the perverse effect does not require the presence of vertical product differentiation. Further, the perverse effect of taxation is especially strong in the presence of incomplete regulation, that is, when only one of the markets is subject to taxation.     

浅议个人所得税改革的政治经济学因素

传统的税收理论把个人所得税划分为综合、分类和混合税制三种类型。我国理论界在个人所得税效率和公平的认识上也存在误区：一方面认为分类税制征管方便,成本低;另一方面认为分类税制可以区别征税,能更好地处理公平问题。事实上,个人所得税从是否分类和是否累进征税两个维度可以划分为四种类型。从征管效率看,综合税制要优于分类税制,比例税制要优于累进税制;从公平角度看,综合税制也更符合市场经济公平竞争的精神。所以,我国的个人所得税的改革方向应该是综合比例税制。近几年个人所得税工薪所得免征额进行了两次调整,主要是受到利益集团的影响,调整基本上与税刺改革的效率和公平目标无关。个人所得税改革的关键是要选择合适的税制类型,采取整体推进全面改革的方式。同时,改革中应该警惕利益集团的影响。     

Timing and Commitment of Environmental Policy,Adoption of New Technology,and Repercussions on R&;D

We investigate the interplay between environmental policy, incentives to adoptnew technology, and repercussions on R&D. We study a model where a monopolistic upstream firm engages in R&D and sells advanced abatement technology to polluting downstream firms. We consider four different timing and commitment regimes of environmental tax and permit policies: ex post taxation (or issuing permits), interim commitment to a tax rate (a quota of permits) after observing R&D success but before adoption, and finally two types of ex antecommitment before R&D activity, one with a unique tax rate (quota of permits), the other one with a menu of tax rates (permit quotas). We study the second best tax and permit policies and rank these with respect to welfare. In particular, we find that commitment to a menu of tax rate dominates all other policy regimes.     

Progressive taxation and the intensity and timing of investment

This paper examines the effect of progressive taxation on a firm's investment intensity and timing decisions using a real options approach. The firm possesses a perpetual option to invest in a project at any instant by incurring an irreversible investment cost at that time. The amount of the irreversible investment cost determines the intensity of investment that augments the value of the project. Tax progression is specified in a particular case of a constant marginal tax rate with an exogenously given tax exemption threshold that makes the average tax rate increase with the tax base. We show that the firm's investment decisions are neutral to tax progression only when the exogenously given tax exemption threshold is sufficiently large. When tax neutrality does not hold, we show that progressive taxation has a perverse effect on investment intensity. Finally, we show that progressive taxation induces the firm to invest earlier as compared to the case under proportional taxation (i.e., in the absence of any tax exemption).     

Externalities and optimal taxation

This paper reexamines the optimal tax design problem (income and commodities) in the presence of externalities. The nature of the second–best, and the choice of the tax instruments, are motivated by the informational structure in the economy. The main results are: (i) environmental levies (linear or nonlinear) differ in formula from Pigouvian taxes by the expressions for the optimal tax on private goods; (ii) externalities do not affect commodity tax formulas (linear and nonlinear) for private goods; (iii) externalities do not affect the income tax structure if commodity taxes are nonlinear and affect it if commodity taxes are linear; and (iv) a general income tax plus strictly Pigouvian taxes are sufficient for efficient taxation if individuals of different types have identical marginal rates of substitution (at any given consumption bundle).