房地产税征收方案设计:收入分配效应及福利效应

以文献述评和2017年中国家庭金融调查数据为基础,设计由六档税率、三种免税方式、多项减免标准形成的126种房地产税征收方案,考察房地产税的收入分配效应和社会福利效应。结果表明：房地产税采用“面积+价值”综合免税方式的收入分配效应和福利效应较优。其中,减免面积标准须随税率提升而增加,福利效应受到免税方式、免税标准、税率及居民收入差距厌恶程度的综合影响。     

我国城镇居民收入分配的变动趋势:基于社会福利比较的视角

经济学研究的出发点是社会福利的最大化.通过不断放松社会福利函数的约束条件,依次应用洛伦茨优势比较、广义洛伦茨优势比较、均值一方差优势比较和社会福利指数比较等社会福利比较准则,对1985～2004年期间我国城镇居民收入分配变动状况进行比较和排列,研究结果表明:除在1987～1989年期间城镇居民收入分配状况存在轻微社会福利恶化外,居民收入分配的社会福利水平一直呈逐年上升趋势,且在大多数年份中社会福利存在帕累托改善,社会福利改善的成因是实际收入的增长足以补偿收入不平等的扩大.     

社会养老保险福利效应研究述评

提高国民福利是政府建立社会养老保险的最终目标。国外研究主要运用一般均衡方法构建代际交叠模型,从养老保险收入分配功能及其对经济增长(储蓄率和资本积累)的影响两个角度对不同养老保险模式的福利效应进行综合研究,研究成果十分丰富。然而,国内对如何在现有约束条件下实现国民福利最大化的探讨不够系统和深入。发展型福利思想为未来养老保险福利效应研究及政策改革提供了新的视角。     

Intertemporally Dependent Preferences and the Welfare Cost of Capital Income Taxation

The welfare cost of capital income taxation is analyzed utilizing intertemporally dependent preference operationalized using a variable rate of time preference. It is shown that if households exhibit increasing marginal impatience, then the welfare cost of capital income taxation is inversely related to the elasticity of the rate of time preference with respect to consumption. Therefore, the welfare cost of capital income taxation reported using time additive preferences may not be robust. Numerical examples show that the use of time additive preferences could result in the welfare cost of capital income taxation to be overestimated by as much as 25%.     

基础养老金统筹层次的收入再分配效应

推动基本养老保险由省级统筹向全国统筹过渡是我国现阶段社会保障制度改革的重心,对于实现经济的公平高效发展具有重要意义。为此,选取2006—2017年全国31个地区的面板数据,以基础养老金省级统筹过渡到全国统筹后,不同地区及不同收入群体间的收入再分配效应为研究对象,从统支视域出发,采用渐进式计发办法预测2041年统筹层次提升后,各地区不同收入群体的基础养老金待遇水平,并结合泰尔指数和离散系数进行比较静态分析,结果发现：养老金统筹层次提升存在着显著的收入再分配效应,但各地区养老金待遇差距与其经济发展水平并无必然联系。     

The Elasticity of Taxable Income in New Zealand*

This paper reports estimates of the elasticity of taxable income with respect to the net‐of‐tax rate for New Zealand taxpayers. The relative stability of the New Zealand personal income tax system, in terms of marginal rates, thresholds and the tax base, provides helpful conditions for deriving these estimates. The elasticity of taxable income was estimated to be substantially higher for the highest income groups. Changes in the timing of income flows for the higher income recipients were found to be an important response to the announcement of a new higher rate bracket. The marginal welfare costs of personal income taxation were consistent across years, being relatively small for all but the higher tax brackets. For the top marginal rate bracket of 39 per cent, the welfare cost of raising an extra dollar of tax revenue was estimated to be well in excess of a dollar. Implications of the findings are that: disincentive effects of high top marginal rates can be substantial even when labour supply responses are small; the welfare costs of increases in top marginal tax rates can be high; and announcement effects of tax policy changes can lead to considerable income shifting between time periods.     

Cost Liability and Residential Space Heating Expenditures of Welfare Recipients in Germany*

Within the German welfare system, recipients’ heating expenditures are generally fully covered by the government. This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that households receiving welfare payments turn to overconsumption of residential space heating. We use micro‐data from two different data sources to explore whether the conditional heating expenditures of these households differ significantly from those of other households. Our empirical findings suggest that even when controlling for a range of other factors, this is indeed the case, as their heating expenditures lie about 7–8 per cent above those of other households. These results are fairly robust to sensitivity analyses. Comparing the results with those for a control group, expenditures for heating are still more than 5 per cent higher. Our results imply that there is potential scope for cost savings if this policy is changed.     

The Distributional Implications of Income Under‐Reporting in Hungary*

The ability and inclination of specific social groups to evade tax vary widely, and this leads to considerable variation in the actual tax burden on individuals with similar levels of income. Thus, ignoring tax evasion can be seriously misleading in terms of the distributive and fiscal effects of the tax system. This paper estimates the distributional implications of income tax evasion in Hungary, based on a random sample of the administrative tax records of nearly 230,000 individuals. Gross incomes declared in the administrative tax returns are compared with incomes stated in a nationally representative household budget survey. Our estimates show that the average rate of underreporting is 9–13 per cent, though this conceals a big difference between the self‐employed (who hide the greater part of their income) and employees. The estimates are likely to be lower bounds. These rates are used in a tax– benefit microsimulation model to calculate the fiscal and distributional implications of under‐reporting. Tax evasion reduces households' personal income tax payments by about 16–20 per cent. While the poverty rate increases only slightly, income inequality rises significantly, suggesting that high‐income households tend to evade tax proportionately more. Finally, we find that tax evasion largely reduces the progressivity of the tax system.     

Universal Credit: A Preliminary Analysis of Its Impact on Incomes and Work Incentives*

Alongside a series of cuts that will reduce welfare spending by £18 billion per year by 2014–15, the UK government announced in November 2010 plans to integrate and simplify means‐tested welfare benefits and in‐work tax credits for working‐age adults into a single programme, to be known as Universal Credit and to be phased in from October 2013. The aims were to make it easier for claimants to claim benefits, to make the gains to work more transparent and to reduce the amount spent on administration and lost in fraud and error. More households will see entitlements rise from the move to Universal Credit considered in isolation than will see entitlements fall; in aggregate, entitlements will rise by nearly £1.1 billion a year. Low‐income families will see their entitlements rise by more than high‐income families, on average, and couples will gain more from the reform, on average, than single‐adult families, especially if there are also children in the family. In general, those facing the weakest incentive to work at all, or the weakest incentive to increase earnings, see their incentives strengthened, including those with very low earnings and hours worked per week and those who at present experience simultaneous withdrawal of multiple means‐tested benefits and tax credits. But a Council Tax Benefit that operates separately from Universal Credit, and that has rules that vary across English local authorities, could easily undermine many of the supposed advantages of Universal Credit.     

Anticipating Tax Changes: Evidence from the Finnish Corporate Income Tax Reform of 2005*

Using register‐based panel data covering all Finnish firms from 1999 to 2004, we examine how corporations anticipated the 2005 dividend tax increase via changes in their dividend and investment policies. The Finnish capital and corporate income tax reform of 2005 creates a useful opportunity to measure this behaviour, since it involves exogenous variation in the tax treatment of different types of firms. The estimation results reveal that those firms that anticipated a dividend tax hike increased their dividend payouts in a statistically significant way. This increase was not accompanied by a reduction in investment activities, but rather was associated with increased indebtedness in non‐listed firms. The results also suggest that the timing of dividend distributions probably offsets much of the potential for increased dividend tax revenue following the reform.     

收入差距、社会保障与提升居民幸福感和获得感

中国经济增长存在“Easterlin悖论”。如何破解悖论,是当下学术研究重点关注的问题,也是习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想的核心要义。利用中国家庭综合调查数据,在Ordered Probit和OLS模型构建的基础上,阐述了收入差距、社会保障与居民幸福感和获得感提升之间相互影响的机理及机制。结果表明:收入差距与居民幸福感和获得感之间呈“倒U型”关系;社会保障在提升居民幸福感和获得感方面表现突出。通过机理分析可知,收入差距过大形成的不公平感降低了幸福感和获得感,而社会保障既能通过提高居民消费水平与健康水平来提升幸福感和获得感,也能够通过提高公平感来缓解收入差距给幸福感和获得感带来的负面影响。因此,维护收入分配的公平性,降低居民对社会风险的担忧程度,提升防范与应对风险的能力是提高居民幸福感和获得感的重要举措。     

社会保障对收入分配差距的调节效应——基于陕西省宝鸡市住户调查数据的实证研究

社会保障具有重要的收入再分配功能,在很多国家社会保障都是调节居民收入分配差距最重要的手段。本文对陕西省宝鸡市住户调查数据的实证研究表明,社会保障转移性收入缩小了居民收入分配差距,使城乡居民收入的基尼系数下降了4.5%,其中城镇居民基尼系数下降22.8%,农村居民基尼系数下降1.82%。但由于农村居民获得的社会保障转移性收入远远低于城镇居民,从而导致城乡收入差距上升23.17%。为抑制收入分配差距的进一步扩大,中国应重视社会保障对收入分配的调节作用,进一步增加社会保障的财政投入。尤其要加大对农村社会保障的财政投入,尽快扭转社会保障对城乡收入差距的逆向调节。     

近代西方社会福利思想历史演进述评——一种历史观的形成与发展

在资本主义的发展进程中,近代西方社会福利思想的历史演进主要围绕以下几个选择进行:以经济-政治经济分析框架选择为基础的关于市场和政府的运行机制,关于个人和集体、国家的责任主体,关于效率与财富创造、公平①与财富分配的核心理念。进过几个世纪的演进,综合分析框架下强调多元机制和多元责任主体的折中型的、体系化的社会福利思想逐渐形成,但其独立的核心理念并不很明确。     

The Displacement Effect of Public Pensions on the Accumulation of Financial Assets*

The generosity of public pensions may depress private savings and provide incentives to retire early. While there is plenty of evidence supporting the latter effect, there remains considerable controversy over whether public pensions crowd out private savings. This paper uses international micro‐data sets collected over recent years to investigate whether public pensions displace private savings. The identification strategy relies not only on cross‐country differences in generosity but also on differences in the progressivity or non‐linearity of pension formulas across countries. We estimate that an extra dollar of pension wealth depresses accumulated financial assets around the time of retirement by 22 cents. An extra 10,000 dollars in public pension wealth reduces the average retirement age by roughly one month, which implies an elasticity of years of retirement with respect to pension wealth of 0.15.     

Effects of Temporary In‐Work Benefits for Welfare Recipients: Examination of the Australian Working Credit Programme*

We investigate the impact of ‘Working Credit’, a nationally‐implemented programme which created increased incentives for welfare recipients to undertake temporary work. Highlighting the difficulties in identifying programme effects in the absence of a randomised controlled trial or a natural experiment, we produce estimates of impacts under alternative identifying assumptions and also undertake various robustness checks. Unconditional and regression‐adjusted difference‐in‐difference estimates suggest that the introduction of the Working Credit programme increased employment rates, earnings and exits for those on income support, but matching methods and various robustness checks provide conflicting evidence on the impact on movements from welfare to work for unemployment benefit recipients. Moreover, estimated effects on earnings while on benefits are sensitive to identifying assumptions. Notwithstanding our inability to conclusively identify causal effects of the programme, we note that our findings are broadly consistent with the incentive effects of the programme, with recipients making use of the credits to increase earnings while on benefits, but not increasing movements off welfare.     

我国间接税与收入分配公平关系的实证分析

税收理论认为间接税具有累退性,有利于征管效率但不利于社会公平。采用1994～2009年时间序列数据,计算出库兹涅茨比率以衡量居民收入分配差距,通过对增值税、消费税、营业税、资源税、城建税、全部间接税对库兹涅茨比率影响的实证研究表明,目前我国以增值税为代表的间接税占税收总收入的比重过高,不利于发挥税收调节收入分配差距的作用,需要在今后逐步加以调整;同时间接税中的消费税有一定的缩小我国居民收入分配差距的作用,可以适当加以规范,以发挥其促进社会公平的作用。     

Impacts of Immigration on an Ageing Welfare State: An Applied General Equilibrium Model for France

Immigration is often seen as an instrument of adaptation for ageing countries. In this paper, we evaluate, using a dynamic general equilibrium model, the contribution of migration policy in reducing the tax burden associated with the ageing population in France. Four alternative scenarios, compared with a baseline scenario based on official projections, are simulated with the aim of quantifying the effects of immigration on French social protection finances. We show that the age and, to a lesser extent, the skill structure of immigrants are the key features that mainly determine the effects on social protection finances. Overall, these effects are all the more positive in the short to medium term if the migration policy is selective (in favour of more skilled workers). In the long term, the beneficial effects of a selective policy may disappear. But whatever the degree of selectivity of the migration policy, the financial gains from higher consequent migration flows are relatively moderate compared with the demographic changes implied by ageing.     

Removing Homeownership Bias in Taxation: The Distributional Effects of Including Net Imputed Rent in Taxable Income

The income tax systems of most countries entail a favourable treatment of homeownership, compared to rental‐occupied housing. Such ‘homeownership bias’ and its consequences for a wide range of economic outcomes have long been recognised in the economic literature. Although a removal of the homeownership bias is generally advocated on efficiency grounds, its distributional implications are often neglected, especially in a cross‐country perspective. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by investigating the first‐order effects, in terms of distribution of income and work incentives, of removing the income tax provisions favouring homeownership. We consider six European countries – Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK – that exhibit important variation in terms of income tax treatment of homeowners. Using the multi‐country tax benefit model EUROMOD, we analyse the distributional consequences of including net imputed rent in the taxable income definition that applies in each country, together with the removal of existing special tax treatments of incomes or expenses related to the main residence; thus, we provide a measure of the homeownership bias. We implement three tax policy scenarios. In the first, imputed rent is included in the taxable income of homeowners, while at the same time existing mortgage interest tax relief schemes and taxation of cadastral incomes are abolished. In the two further revenue‐neutral scenarios, the additional tax revenue raised through the taxation of imputed rent is redistributed to taxpayers, through either a tax rate reduction or a tax exemption increase. The results show how including net imputed rent in the tax base might affect inequality in each of the countries considered. Housing taxation appears to be a promising avenue for raising additional revenues, or lightening taxation of labour, with no inequality‐increasing side effects.