不能用西方最优税收理论指导我国的税制改革

西方最优税收理论的结论均存在严格假定条件,它们是在严格假定条件下的推论,离开了假定的条件,结论就不成立。这一理论具有学术价值,但不能直接应用于一个国家具体的税制改革,在西方发达国家如此,在我国这样不发达的市场经济国家更是如此。     

最优线性所得税模型评析

在研究最优税收理论在我国的实用性问题时，不必局限于考虑额外负担问题，而应该把研究的重点转向税收的行政管理和寻租，同时，从税收的社会公平角度，还应当把支出问题也纳入最优税收理论研究的范畴。     

制止逃税行为的经济分析

由于税收是为满足社会公共需要而将纳税人所拥有的一部分财富无偿转移到政府手中的强制性手段,纳税人有一种将其纳税义务最小化的强烈愿望,其方式大致有避税和逃税两种。虽然两者都严重地损害了税收管理,并往往导致税制在其运行中偏离税收立法时所确定的目标,从而降低...     

外商逃税黑洞到底有多深

<正> 大量外资涌入我国,外商投资企业迅猛增加,他们不但带来了新思维、新的管理理念,而且还为我国经济的快速发展注入了新的活力,外商们品尝了“奶酪”后,随之出现的洋人避税问题也日趋严重,使得我国涉外税收大量流失,成为一个难以估量的“黑洞”。     

最优税收理论及其导向性分析

西方最优税收理论代表了当代税收理论研究的最前沿成果。本文通过对最优商品税理论、最优所得税理论的研究和梳理,分析了最优税收理论对"现实税制"设计的导向性作用。     

最优所得税理论与我国个人所得税的实践

最优所得税理论一诞生,就受到了广泛关注。一些学者用不同模型阐述了最优所得税理论。虽毋须严格按照这些模型来设计我国的个人所得税制度,但其模型所体现的税制设计理念或思想对现阶段我国个人所得税制度的设计具有一定的参考价值。     

Optimal Income Taxation and the Ability Distribution: Implications for Migration Equilibria

As recently argued by Diamond (1998), one of the key factors explaining the progressivity of an optimal non-linear income tax is the distribution of productivity among workers. Migration is one source of changes in the productivity distribution. How changes in the populations ability distribution affect optimal income tax schedules has received little attention. Changing the distribution generally affects both the objective function and the government budget constraint. We first consider the comparative statics of the fraction of highly-skilled workers with maximin and maximax welfare functions (so that only the second effect is present) and a quasi-linear utility function. We also present some results for a utilitarian social welfare function.We then study the interaction between mobility and redistributive taxation. We consider mobility by either the skilled or unskilled population under majority voting where governments take the population as fixed. If individuals choose to relocate independently, having identical ability distributions is always a stable equilibrium when the unskilled are the mobile group. However, this is not always the case when the skilled are mobile. If groups of individuals can choose where to locate, having identical ability distributions across regions is only an equilibrium when the mobile type has an overall majority.     

电子商务环境下的国际逃税与避税

由于电子商务的迅速发展和各国税收立法的相对滞后,电子商务逃、避税问题日益突出。各国根据电子商务环境下的国际逃、避税的新特点,在原有防范措施的基础上,采取了一些新的措施,如加强税务机关自身信息化建设、提高网络技术、推行电子商务税收登记制度、从支付体系入手解决电子商务税收的征管问题,加强国际间的交流与合作等。     

Optimal International Taxation and Growth Rate Convergence: Tax Competition vs. Coordination

Optimal international taxation and its implications for convergence in long run income growth rates are analyzed in the context of an endogenously growing world economy with perfect capital mobility. Under tax competition (i) the residence principle will maximize national welfare; (ii) the optimal long run tax rate on capital incomes from various sources will be zero in all countries; and (iii) long term per capita income growth rates will be equalized across countries. Under tax coordination, (i) becomes irrelevant while (ii) and (iii) will continue to hold. In other words, optimal tax policies are growth-equalizing with and without international policy coordination. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Thinking and Learning in the Tax Evasion Game

Equilibrium behaviour is one of the fundamental concepts of economics: that each player's strategy is a best response to their beliefs about other players' strategies (and that these beliefs are realised). It is therefore striking that one of the most utilised economic models of tax compliance (Allingham and Sandmo, 1972) lacks this property as random audit selection is not a best response for the tax administration. The game theory literature of tax compliance has solved the equilibrium under assumptions of perfect information, full rationality and representative agents (Reinganum and Wilde, 1986; Erard and Feinstein, 1994). The recent application of behavioural economics to tax compliance (Hashimzade et al., 2014) allows richer assumptions such as heterogeneity and asymmetric information to be included in agent‐based models. This paper investigates the tax administration's best‐response audit strategy with heterogeneous taxpayers, imperfect information and evolutionary survival of taxpayers. It finds that, under these conditions, the tax administration's best‐response audit strategy is an adaptive learning approach and not a well‐defined audit function. This fits with actual practice of ‘predictive analytics’ by OECD tax administrations. Behavioural game theory also predicts that when actors are information rich, adaptive learning will dominate abstract thinking.     

Tax Evasion and Equity Theory: An Investigative Approach

Traditional economic theory assumes rational individuals with stable preferences who, given an array of options and probabilities, maximize their expected utility. However, experimental research finds that individuals make systematic mistakes when attempting to maximize their expected utility. The economic psychology approach includes aspects of the traditional economic approach and the psychological approach that emphasizes values, attitudes, norms, conformity and morals.This paper investigates equity theory and tax evasion using the framework of prospect theory pioneered by Tversky and Kahneman. We design an investigation to identify if individual behavior follows the usual results of prospect theory, given a scenario that frames a perception of inequity. The investigation frames a scenario to invoke a controlled tax regime. The frame varies according to which inequity is being measured, exchange or social. Once the scenario is established, a questionnaire is designed to determine how the individual responds when filing taxes. The responses to the control questions are consistent with prospect theory. However, in general the responses to the framed questions, depicting inequity, are more consistent with expected utility theory.     

Tax Havens,Tax Evasion and Tax Information Exchange Agreements in the OECD

Using data on Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI), we find a positive relationship between higher tax burden and OECD residents’ tax evasion, especially via tax havens. Contrary to established investor preference for certain country characteristics, we find they are less important to tax evaders who value privacy and want to remain undetected by their home tax authorities. We find very limited evidence that OECD Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAS) reduce tax evasion, controlling for other determinants of overall OECD FPI. Without the US in the OECD sample, tax havens play a lesser role and OECD policies appear to make a marginal impact.     

Capital Mobility and Source-Based Taxation of Capital Income in Small Open Economies

This paper examines the taxation of capital income in a small open economy that faces a highly elastic supply of internationally mobile capital and increasing tax competition. The analysis considers a wide variety of additional factors that affect the determination of capital income taxation policy, including the desire to tax economic rents earned by foreign and domestic firms, the desire to take advantage of any treasury transfer effects, the role played by transfer pricing and other financial accounting manipulations by foreign multinationals, the need for a backstop to the personal income tax and various political concerns. The paper evaluates several potential income and consumption-based tax reforms in this context. JEL Code: H21, H25, H87     

Taxation of Interest Income

Why is interest income taxed so much more heavily than other forms of capital income? This differential tax treatment has generated substantial tax arbitrage, resulting in lower tax revenue, efficiency costs, and apparently net gains to rich borrowers and net losses to poor lenders, together suggesting that this tax treatment makes no sense on welfare grounds. In examining this argument more formally, this paper reveals two omitted considerations that can help explain the existing tax treatment. First, the forecasted increase in the market interest rate results in a redistribution from rich borrowers to poor lenders. Yet this redistribution comes at no marginal efficiency cost, starting from a situation with no distortions to portfolio choice, so at the margin dominates further redistribution through the income tax. In addition, information about an individual's portfolio choice reveals information about her earnings ability, even controlling for observed labor income, if those who are more able tend to be less risk averse. By making use of this extra information about earnings ability, the tax system can be better tailored to redistribute from able to less able, for any given efficiency cost.     

Tax Evasion and Auditing in a Federal Economy

This paper analyzes the relation between tax auditing and fiscal equalization in the context of fiscal competition. We incorporate a model of tax evasion by firms into a standard tax competition framework where regional governments use their audit rates as a strategic instrument to engage in fiscal competition. We compare the region’s choice of audit policies for three different cases: A scenario of unconfined competition without interregional transfers, a scenario with a gross revenue equalization (GRS) scheme and finally, a scenario with net revenue sharing (NRS), where not only the revenues from taxation but also the regions auditing costs are shared. Without regional transfers, fiscal competition leads to audit rates which are inefficiently low for revenue-maximizing governments. While in general GRS aggravates the inefficiency, NRS makes the decentralized choice of auditing policies more efficient.JEL Code: H26, H71, H77