Tax coordination with different preferences for public goods: Conflict or harmony of interest?

The paper analyzes strategic commodity taxation in a model with trade in a single private good that is simultaneously imported by consumers of a high-tax country and exported by its producers. Conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium are given, and an asymmetry is introduced through different preferences for public goods. Two tax coordination measures are discussed—a minimum tax rate and a coordinated increase in the costs of cross-border shopping. It is shown that tax coordination generally benefits the high-tax country while the low-tax country will gain only if the intensity of tax competition is high in the initial equilibrium or if governments are pricesensitive toward the effective marginal costs of public good supply.     

Electronic Commerce and the State Retail Sales Tax: A Challenge to American Federalism

Electronic commerce, by magnifying problems with the existing sales tax, has precipitated reexamination of basic precepts of fiscal federalism in the United States, not just taxation of remote sellers. This paper examines: key features of electronic commerce; the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the Commission it mandates; tax assignments in the United States; problems in assigning sales taxes to subnational governments; constitutional impediments to requiring remote vendors to collect sales and use taxes; tentative findings of the National Tax Association's project on taxation of electronic commerce; and implications of the current debate over taxation of electronic commerce for intergovernmental fiscal relations in the United States.     

Optimal Capital Structure and Industry Dynamics

This paper provides a competitive equilibrium model of capital structure and industry dynamics. In the model, firms make financing, investment, entry, and exit decisions subject to idiosyncratic technology shocks. The capital structure choice reflects the tradeoff between the tax benefits of debt and the associated bankruptcy and agency costs. The interaction between financing and production decisions influences the stationary distribution of firms and their survival probabilities. The analysis demonstrates that the equilibrium output price has an important feedback effect. This effect has a number of testable implications. For example, high growth industries have relatively lower leverage and turnover rates.     

我国物业税开征中存在问题的探讨

物业税作为一种即将开征的税收政策,是我国税费改革的一项重要举措。本文主要阐述了我国开征物业税的构想与思路,在此基础上,进一步指出了我国开征物业税过程中亟待解决的产权不明晰,物业税率难确定,房产评估机构不健全,公民纳税意愿淡薄等矛盾和问题。最后,提出了明晰土地产权,理顺产权关系,建立科学的房屋产权信息公示和查询系统,建立完善的物业税评估体系,健全物业税必备的法律法规,改革我国现有税种,合理设置物业税计税依据,调动地方政府积极性等一系列的建议。期望此文能对我国物业税的顺利开征提供一些有益的参考和帮助。     

中国环境税的功能检视与立法路径

环境税因其具有有效筹集环保资金、调控污染与破坏环境资源的行为、提高经济增长质量和维护社会环境公平等功能而领先于传统的命令-控制型环境管理模式。但在推行中可能出现双重红利引发偏差、转嫁税负影响减排以及重效率轻公平等现象,产生功能异变。我国政府确立了税收手段保护和改善环境的治理思路,厘清环境税所具备的功能、防范其发生功能异变、明晰新形势下环境税的功能需求是引导我国环境税制顺利推行的前提。构建符合中国本土化的环境税制、实现环境税的功能应当从健全法律运行体制、明晰政府事权责划分以及完善保障性制度建设等方面进行探索和思考。     

Labour taxation,job creation and job destruction—Focusing on the role of wage setting

We study the effects of labour taxation in a search equilibrium model with endogenous job destruction, embedding three alternative models of wage setting: Nash bargain, monopoly union and efficiency wages. Tax policy implications vary considerably depending on the wage setting model and indexation of unemployment benefits. If wage setting is based on bargaining, a pure increase in the tax progression reduces unemployment, improves the relative position of low-income workers and facilitates the emergence of low-productivity jobs. However, this comes at the cost of reduced efficiency partly owing to lower average productivity. JEL Code J30, J51, J64, H24     

International tax competition with endogenous sequencing

This paper examines endogenous timing in an international tax competition model. Unlike existing studies, governments are assumed to decide not only tax rates but also whether they are set early or late. The Nash equilibrium provides four conclusions for alternative double tax allowances. First, tax deductions cause simultaneous tax competition, whereas tax credits yield sequential tax competition. Second, any double taxation relief would generate capital trade. Third, a credit system could maximize one country’s economic welfare but would lower another country’s economic welfare more than a deduction regime. Fourth, a home country’s government would choose credit regimes under a maximax rule, but select deduction methods under minimax and maximin rules, while all double tax allowances are indifferent to a host country. The findings resolve the question raised by Bond and Samuelson (Economic Journal 99:1099–1111, 1989) of why governments choose tax credits when tax deductions are clearly better. Namely, this paper shows that one country is better off but another is worse off with credits rather than deductions. Accordingly, we cannot clearly specify whether governments choose credit systems or deduction regimes. The possible double tax allowances employed by the governments depend on their own decision criterion.     

Exemption vs. Credit Method in International Double Taxation Treaties

This paper examines the choice of international double taxation relief methods by two small countries that mutually exchange foreign direct investment. At the first stage, each country chooses between the exemption and the credit method (as prescribed by the OECD model treaty) and at the second stage, each country sets nationally optimal non-discriminatory capital tax rates. It is shown that in the subgame perfect equilibrium both countries choose the exemption method. Mutual application of the exemption method is also shown to yield the highest welfare for each country. While the tax export effect generally induces both countries to choose inefficiently high tax rates, this effect is weakest when both countries exempt foreign earned profits from domestic taxation.     

论税收之债的自力执行

税收之债具有自力执行的效力。所谓税收之债的自力执行,是指税务机关行使征税职权,遇有纳税人拒不履行按期足额纳税义务时,税务机关可以直接采取强制措施迫使纳税人履行纳税义务。各国税法之所以赋予税收之债自力执行的效力,主要是基于行政效力先定、税收确实及效率原则以及税收的公益性等因素的考量。同时,为了有效防止或监督税务机关滥施行政强制现象的发生,我国税法对税务机关自力执行权的行使范围、条件和程序予以了严格限制。     

From the global income tax to the dual income tax: Recent tax reforms in the Nordic countries

The paper discusses the recent drive toward a system of dual income taxation (DIT) in the Nordic countries. The pure version of this system combines progressive taxation of labor and transfer incomes with a proportional tax on income from capital at a level equal to the corporate income tax rate. The paper considers the motives for the introduction of this new income tax system, ranging from abstract theoretical arguments to very pragmatic considerations. While the Nordic DIT system violates the principles of the conventional personal income tax, it is argued that it may in fact be more in line with the philosophy of a true Haig-Simons comprehensive income tax. It is also suggested that the DIT system may cause fewer distortions to resource allocation than the conventional income tax. On the debit side, the paper points out several practical problems of taxing income from small enterprises under the differentiated income tax.     

Optimal taxation and redistribution in an OLG model with unemployment

This paper concerns redistribution via nonlinear income taxation in an overlapping generations model with two ability-types. We assume that the wage rates are determined by bargaining between unions and firms, meaning that the equilibrium is characterized by involuntary unemployment. We show that the policy instruments that are used to calculate the marginal labor income tax rate for each ability-type give rise to intertemporal tax base effects. In addition, since the relationship between the employment and the capital stock implies intertemporal production inefficiency at the second best optimum, imperfect competition in the labor market may itself justify capital income taxation.      

企业购并行为中的税收政策效应

本主要分析所得税对企业市场购并行为的影响。国外学所分析企业购并时,通常假设市场完全竞争,企业的决策不受非市场因素的干扰。他们认为,企业购并中,购并方的收益率只受两个因素的影响,即企业已分配股息的纳税比率和资本利得税率。笔从两方面对以上模型进行了修正：一是修正了其中“债务利息可以全部税前扣除”的假设前提,二是修正了被购并方在交易中的交易条件。以上修正使模型能够更加准确地描述中国的现实经济环境,也得出了完全不同的结论。     

Tax Arbitrage and the Existence of Equilibrium Prices for Financial Assets

In models where both investors and securities are subject to differential taxation, there may be no set of prices that rule out infinite gains to trade, or “tax arbitrage.” This paper characterizes the joint restrictions on financial-asset returns and investors' tax schedules that preclude tax arbitrage in the absence of short-sale constraints. The authors show that, if there exists any configuration of marginal tax rates on investors' tax schedules that rule out infinite gains to trade, then “no-tax-arbitrage” prices will exist. They also show that the existence of “no-tax-arbitrage” prices ensures the existence of equilibrium prices.     

Agency costs,taxes and debt: The UK evidence

This paper provides an empirical examination of the impact of the corporation tax and agency costs on firms' capital structure decisions. Our evidence suggests that the agency costs are the main determinants of corporate borrowing. Consistent with the agency theory, we find that firms that have fewer growth options have more debt in their capital structure. Moreover, our results show that debt mitigates the free cash flow problem and that firms that are more likely to be diversified and less prone to bankruptcy are highly geared. the negative effect of insider shareholding on leverage disappears, however; when all the agency mechanisms are accounted for. In addition, we find that, in the long run, companies that are tax exhausted exhibit significantly lower debt ratios than tax-paying firms. However, in the short run, firms' capital structure decisions are not affected by taxation.     

对控制我国税收成本的研究

当前控制我国税收成本应正确处理两种关系:依法治税与税收成本控制的关系;征税成本与纳税成本、短期成本与长期成本的关系。控制税收成本应采取以下措施:加强税收法制建设;完善税制和征管模式;建立税收成本核算制度;改革人员考核机制。     

The theory of optimal taxation: what is the policy relevance?

The paper discusses the implications of optimal tax theory for the debates on uniform commodity taxation and neutral capital income taxation. While strong administrative and political economy arguments in favor of uniform and neutral taxation remain, recent advances in optimal tax theory suggest that the information needed to implement the differentiated taxation prescribed by optimal tax theory may be easier to obtain than previously believed. The paper also points to the strong similarity between optimal commodity tax rules and the rules for optimal source-based capital income taxation.      

Tax Competition and International Public Goods

A well known result in the tax competition literature is that tax rates are set too low in the Nash equilibrium to finance an efficient level of public consumption goods. In this model we introduce international spillovers in public goods provision and show that such spillovers reduce, and in the limiting case of perfect spillovers, eliminate tax competition. There is, however, always underprovision of the public good in equilibrium, since larger spillovers increase the problem of free riding. In an extension to the model, we demonstrate that congestion costs may result in overprovision of the public good.     

The Nash bargaining solution vs. equilibrium in a reinsurance syndicate

We compare the Nash bargaining solution in a reinsurance syndicate to the competitive equilibrium allocation, focusing on uncertainty and risk aversion. Restricting attention to proportional reinsurance treaties, we find that, although these solution concepts are very different, one may just appear as a first order Taylor series approximation of the other, in certain cases. This may be good news for the Nash solution, or for the equilibrium allocation, all depending upon one's point of view.

Our model also allows us to readily identify some properties of the equilibrium allocation not be shared by the bargaining solution, and vice versa, related to both risk aversions and correlations.     

Time Deductibles as Screening Devices: Competitive Markets

Seminal papers on asymmetric information in competitive insurance markets, analyzing the monetary deductible as a screening device, show that any existing equilibrium is of a separating type. High risks buy complete insurance, whereas low risks buy partial insurance—and this result holds for the Nash behavior as well as for the Wilson foresight. In this article, we analyze the strength of screening based on limitations to the period of coverage of the contract. We show that in this case (1) the Nash equilibrium may entail low risks not purchasing any insurance at all, and (2) under the Wilson foresight, a pooling equilibrium may exist.