Child Exemptions or Child Allowances

A bstract Eliminating Child exempitons and replacing them with a European style child allowance program would be an effective and costless antipoverty policy The distributional and poverty reducing effects of three potentral child allowance programs are examined These include a fixed dollar tax credit a dollar tax credit a tax credit that declines with income, and a taxable allowance of the some dollar amount for each child     

Income taxation when markets are incomplete

We investigate the welfare effects of proportional income taxation in a standard general equilibrium model with incomplete markets (GEI). Formally, our analysis is on the allocative effects of state-contingent income tax reforms. Tax reforms are restricted to be anonymous, publicly and truthfully announced before markets open, and they are required to result in an ex-post constrained efficient allocation. Our main result is to show that there do typically exist contingent tax reforms that are Pareto improving. These reforms, acting directly on the asset span, modify private risk-sharing opportunities. Thus, unlike most of the GEI literature, the type of policy transmission mechanism considered does not rely on second-order, relative spot price effects. Yet, the key welfare effects of our tax reforms are substantially equivalent to those induced through changes in relative spot prices, as, for example, in Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis (1986), Geanakoplos et al. (1990), or in Citanna et al. (2001). Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 58E17, 46N10, 93B29 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: D52, H21, H24, H25     

‘Klin’-ing up: Effects of Polish tax reforms on those in and on those out

In 2007 and 2008 Polish governments introduced a series of reforms which led to a substantial reduction in the tax “wedge” (in Polish: “klin”) on labour. These consisted of reductions in the disability rate of social security contributions (SSCs) and an introduction of an income tax credit for families with children. We show that the SSCs reforms on their own brought much greater reductions in the tax burden compared to a widely discussed 15% “flat tax”, despite a very similar simulated cost. When considered together the package of introduced reforms reduced the mean ATR on total labour cost from 41.6% to 35.7%. This compares to the mean ATR of 39.6% which would result from the introduction of the “flat tax”. In the analysis we present the effects of the reforms both for the employed and for the non-employed populations. The latter analysis is done in such a way as to account for the entire (simulated) distribution of wages of the non-employed and shows interesting differences between the effects of reforms on employed and non-employed individuals. We argue that to fully appreciate the effect of reductions in labour taxation it is important to bear in mind that one of the reasons for introducing them is to make employment more likely for those who currently do not work, and demonstrate that the introduced package has had a particularly important effect on non-employed second earners. Given the extent of the reductions in the “klin” it is somewhat surprising that so far so little attention has been given to the recent Polish reforms.     

论内外资企业所得税并轨改革

在20世纪80年代初,为吸引外资和引进先进设备,我国制定了相应的外资企业税收优惠政策,这些政策为国家吸引了大量的外贸资金以及先进的技术设备。然而随着国民经济的高速增长以及税基的不断增长,内外资企业出现了严重的不公平竞争,负面影响已逐步显现。本文认为,为了改变内外资企业的不公平竞争以及税收优惠政策引起的负面影响的局面,内外资企业所得税并轨改革势在必行。     

Proposals to Tax Life Insurance Savings as Personal Income

A bstract . Proposals to tax the realized net increment built up in life insurance policies amount to suggestions that we tax rewards to suppliers of capital. As tax policy it would tend to discourage capital accumulation. Many types of income and of capital gains are not taxed as a matter of social policy. Taxing the "inside buildup" would obstruct the building up of a capital base for the family and the economy. Economists recognize that there are alternatives, e.g. , a consumption based tax. In a time of great need for capital, a time of capital shortage, this tax policy would be retrogressive.     

A Reply to Liu's Critique

A bstract . In his comment on our paper. "The Economic Effects of Land Value Taxation: An Empirical Test," Professor Ben-chieh Liu criticizes the structure and specification of our model and indicates the existence of data deficiencies and testing problems. Professor Liu raises some interesting questions, but he does not offer any concrete evidence to refute our original conclusion that the land value tax (LVT) is not superior to the real property tax in terms of stimulating urban development. Since the LVT represents a radical departure from current tax policy , which would lead to significant changes in the distribution of income , the burden of empirical evidence rests on those who believe that it is superior.     

Targeting fertility and female participation through the income tax

We evaluate the effect of a 2003 reform in the Spanish income tax on fertility and the employment of mothers with small children. The reform introduced a tax credit for working mothers with children under the age of three, while also increasing child deductions for all households with children. Theoretically, given the interplay of these two components, the expected effect of the reform is ambiguous on both outcomes. We find that the combined reforms significantly increased both fertility (by almost 5%) and the employment rate of mothers with children under three (by 2%). These effects were more pronounced among less-educated women. In addition, to disentangle the impact of the two reform components, we use an earlier reform that increased child deductions in 1999. We find that the child deductions affect mothers' employment negatively, which implies that the 2003 tax credit would have increased employment even more (up to 5%) in the absence of the change in child deductions.     

The heterogeneous impact of taxation on economic development: New insights from a panel cointegration approach

In this paper, we study the role of taxation on long-run income performance. In the theoretical part of the study, we develop a stylized model based on Barro (1990), in which income taxation has two contradictory roles in the standard Solow (1956) setup: on the one hand, taxation appropriates resources that would otherwise be used for physical capital accumulation, and on the other, it is the source of government spending, which is used to support private production. In the empirical part of the study, the impact of consumption tax, personal income tax, corporate profit tax and property tax on income is estimated using the common correlated effects (CCE) panel cointegration approach, which allows for cross-sectional dependencies and provides both panel- and country-specific results. The panel findings for 30 OECD countries for the period of 1995–2016 indicate that only consumption tax has a statistically significant negative effect on long-run income. However, because the type and sign of the tax coefficients are heterogeneous for the country-specific results, we conclude that taxation has heterogeneous effects on income.     

促进我国绿色经济发展的税制改革研究

本文在对我国绿色经济发展现状和目前税收政策进行分析的基础之上,综合运用经济发展理论和财政学理论,探讨了适合中国目前经济发展的税制改革路径。得出结论,我国现行税制尚存在诸多弊端,在可持续发展的目标下有待进一步完善,并建议应当综合绿色经济发展要求和社会税负能力,推行优化流转税系、完善所得税系、健全辅助税系等方面的措施改革。     

Labor supply responses to the 1990s Japanese tax reforms

The consumption-leisure choice model implies that an exogenous change in tax rates will induce a change in labor supply. This implication is expected to be important to labor supplied by secondary earners under a progressive tax system when spousal income alters effective marginal tax rates. This paper examines labor supply responses to the income tax changes associated with Japanese tax reforms during the 1990s. The results indicate that the hours-of-work elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.8 for married women.     

Simulating the Reform of Means‐tested Benefits with Endogenous Take‐up and Claim Costs*

Microsimulation models are commonly used to examine the distributional impact of reforms of the means‐tested benefit system. Take‐up behaviour is related to the level of entitlement, so reform may induce changes in take‐up. We develop a stochastic simulation method and apply it to a probit model of ‘income support’ take‐up by the UK pensioners. The method allows us to adjust net income for the welfare losses because of tangible or intangible claim costs. Endogenous take‐up and claim costs both have an important impact on the simulated outcomes of the policy reform.     

Mexico''s fiscal crisis

Mexico's current crisis has its origins in a number of structural conditions that developed in the 1970s. This paper examines one of these structural impediments, the country's fiscal disequilibrium. An empirical analysis of the country's tax structure indicates that there is ample scope for major tax reforms geared to introducing more responsiveness into the country's tax collection system. Given that the government will have to reduce its budget deficit to comply with IMF stabilization requirements, the analysis indicates tax reform rather than expenditure reduction would be the most efficient policy in achieving this objective.     

Union wage setting and progressive income taxation with heterogeneous labor: theory and evidence from the German income tax reforms 1986–1990

This paper analyzes the effects of tax shifting in a model with union wage setting and progressive income taxation. The setup allows for different skill levels of the workforce and accounts for the union's distributional objective of income equality. The theoretical predictions of the model are empirically tested with a panel of German micro-data covering the period of the income tax reforms 1986–1990. It is shown that average taxes raise wages, whereas increasing the progressivity of the tax system reduces wages. The effect of progressivity on high-skilled labor tends to be less significant and smaller. Stronger preferences for equality compress the (pre-tax) wage distribution.     

Tax Regimes and Capital Gains Realizations

This paper contrasts the individual capital gains realization behavior between progressive and proportional tax regimes. Using a longitudinal panel of over 288,000 individuals in Sweden, I exploit the 1991 tax reform in Sweden that changed progressive capital gains tax rates ranging from 12% to 80% to a proportional tax rate of 30%. Using the proportional tax system to control for non-tax reasons to realize capital gains, I show that individuals are highly responsive to capital gains tax incentives created by temporary income changes under a progressive capital gains tax. More specifically, I find that individuals with temporary negative (positive) income changes sell (hold) shares that they would hold (sell) in the absence of temporary tax incentives. Further, I show that high-income individuals are more tax sensitive than low-income individuals. This result indicates that low-income individuals facing temporary negative income changes could trade predominantly for non-tax reasons.     

An Income Tax Increase to Fund Higher Education: A CGE Analysis for Chile

An increase in income taxes to fund education was one of the demands made by the social movements that emerged in Chile in 2011. Currently, the Chilean Congress is enacting a tax reform to raise money for higher education. This study aims to show the dynamic effects on the general equilibrium of the Chilean economy under two alternative approaches: a subsidy to lower the price of higher education (public and private), and greater spending on public higher education to reduce household payments for education. The social accounting matrix (SAM) used to calibrate the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model has 38 economic sectors, including the production structure of private education and public education. The study mainly concludes that a subsidy policy has significant advantages over increasing higher public education spending, regarding its effects on variables such as GDP, investment, and household incomes, while both policies have a similar effect on poverty and income distribution.     

Tax morale: Framing and fairness

Tax morale has been a focus of academics and policy makers for some time. The measurement of individuals’ tax morale is subjective, and various proxies have been employed in qualitative and quantitative research. The framing of these measures has been considered in some research with respect to equivalency or goal framing, but the underlying implication of emphasis framing in commonly used proxies has yet to be considered. Further, although fairness and financial literacy have been considered determinants of tax morale, no one has yet considered whether financial and tax literacy (FTL) has a moderating effect on fairness and tax morale.This research addresses these gaps in the literature. The findings suggest that questions and scenarios posed by academics and policy makers should consider positive, negative, and emphasis framing, as well as the moderating effect of the respondents’ FTL to measure individuals’ tax morale effectively. The findings also suggest that raising levels of FTL could have a double dividend: not only will improved FTL have a positive impact on tax morale, but it might be magnified through the impact of fairness. These findings hold only when morale is determined by negatively framed scenarios. In particular, the perceived fairness of the tax system enhances tax morale when FTL is high, whereas the perception of fairness has no effect on tax morale for respondents with lower levels of FTL.     

MARGINAL COMMODITY TAX REFORMS: A SURVEY

Abstract.  As noted 30 years ago by Martin Feldstein, optimal taxes may be useless for practical purposes and emphasis should instead be placed on the possibility of enhancing welfare by reforming existing tax rates. In this perspective, marginal commodity tax reforms are gaining increasing attention due to political and economic constraints on large reforms of direct (or indirect) taxation. In this paper, we summarize the main features and results of the literature on marginal commodity tax reforms pioneered by Ahmad and Stern, further developed by Yitzhaki and Thirsk and recently reinterpreted by Makdissi and Wodon. We establish new links to other fields of research, namely the literature on the use of equivalence scales and on poverty measurement. We also critically examine some issues associated with the implementation of marginal tax reforms with special reference to the calculation of welfare weights and revenue effects. Finally, we suggest directions for future research on poverty-reducing commodity tax reforms.     

THE ECONOMICS OF TAXPAYER COMPLIANCE

Abstract. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that tax evasion is now fairly extensive throughout Western Europe and North America. Academic economists have shown considerable interest in various aspects of tax evasion. In this article we examine the literature on two particular issues. First, why do individuals evade their tax obligations and second, what policies should governments pursue in attempting to reduce or eliminate evasion? We concentrate on income tax evasion which has been the major preoccupation in the literature. We first show that the compliance costs of income tax evasion are quite substantial. We then examine theoretical attempts to model individual taxpayers behaviour. Here we find that it is extremely difficult to make unambiguous predictions concerning the effects of changes in important variables, such as income tax rates. Next, we review the empirical ‘evidence’ obtained from (i) attitudinal surveys, (ii) tax games, and (iii) econometric analysis of individuals’ tax returns. All of these studies are found to be flawed in certain major respects. Finally, we consider a number of policy options available to tax authorities. Given the difficulty of determining a socially optimal level of evasion, governments are likely to pursue suboptimal policies aimed at entirely eliminating tax evasion. However, even here there is considerable disagreement about the design of an efficient policy.     

浅议我国现行个人所得税制改革

个人所得税作为调节居民收入分配的一个重要税种,在我国经济生活中起着至关重要的作用。个税调整直接关系百姓钱袋子,在通胀形势下成为关注热点。随着我国经济的增长,居民可支配收入也在逐年增多,但是作为调节贫富收入差距的"个人所得税"这一税收杠杆却滞后于我们经济的变化,这些问题不仅严重影响了税收调节经济的功能,而且对社会稳定也极为不利。本文在阐明了我国个人所得税制改革中存在的相关问题后,有针对性的提出了相关学者的政策建议。