Using Empirical Point Elasticities to Teach Tax Incidence

Using point elasticities rather than using either arc elasticities or slopes of demand and supply curves provides the best method for teaching students about the economic impacts of excise taxes. Not only does a point-elasticity approach simplify theoretical analysis of tax impacts, but it also allows instructors to take advantage of publicly available empirical estimates of demand and supply elasticities to show students how theoretical results can be applied to real-world tax policy issues. To illustrate these advantages, the authors use several available estimates of point elasticities of demand and supply of raw sugar to calculate the economic impacts of a recently proposed penny-per-pound tax on raw cane sugar grown in the Florida Everglades.     

Puerto Rico in the 1970s and 1980s: Crisis of the Development Model

In his institutional economic essay on "Taxation in Chicago and Philadelphia" (published in 1895) John R. Commons addresses property tax assessment. He demonstrates that the revenue is not just a question of the tax rate and the distribution of the tax burden but also one of constitutional requirements and how the taxes are assessed. His essay is reviewed with regard to his later work, subsequent Institutional Economics, and the social provisioning of the market for professional tax advice. The degree of liabilities is defining characteristics of the differences between the United States and Germany.     

中国税制的国际竞争力研究

国际税收竞争是经济全球化发展的产物,是各国以税收为载体、以促进本国经济增长为目的的竞争,其实质是经济竞争。在此,基于国际税收竞争视角,重点对中国税制的国际竞争力进行评析,分析表明中国税制具有一定的国际竞争力,但诸多方面仍有待完善。在此基础上,借鉴国际经验建立具有竞争性的中国税制,确定合理的宏观税负水平,同时还需加强"税收文化"的建设,建立国际税收协调机制,以应对日益激烈的国际税收竞争。     

Is the Sky the Limit? Can Japanese Government Bonds Continue to Defy Gravity?

This paper presents a simulation model based on the growth rate, the inflation rate, and the consumption tax rate in the future. Future tax revenues and fiscal expenditures are projected using regression models estimated from past data. The fiscal situation is called unsustainable if the outstanding amount of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) becomes higher than the level of private sector financial assets. We focus on the general account of the central government, which is the source of JGB issues. We find that the higher the economic growth, the more likely it is that the fiscal situation is sustainable. When a larger portion of interest income is reinvested in JGBs, the chance is higher that the fiscal situation is sustainable. Most importantly, raising the consumption tax to 20% guarantees fiscal sustainability in most cases. Our analysis shows that without a consumption tax hike beyond the 10% rate, a fiscal crisis will be almost a certainty, even with a real economic growth rate of 2% despite a shrinking labor force. A reasonably quick hike of the consumption tax, namely a hike by 1% a year, up to 20%, combined with high or moderate economic growth rates, seems to keep the economy out of a fiscal crisis, where a moderate growth rate is defined to be generated by a productivity increase per working‐age population of 1.9%, which was the average during the Koizumi years.     

柔性行政在税收执法中适用的可行性分析

随着中国改革开放的深入和社会主义市场经济体制的日益完善,传统刚性行政执法那种僵化、忽视行政相对人权益的弊端日渐显露,通过对近几年执法现状的回顾,人们对行政执法问题进行了重新反思,柔性行政执法被提上日程。柔性行政执法以其灵活性强、注重行政相对人意愿的优势弥补了刚性行政执法的缺陷,而税收行政执法一向被认为是具有强制性的,柔性行政执法在税收执法当中是否具有可行性,很多人抱着怀疑态度,因此需要从理论的高度对税务柔性行政执法存在的正当性、合理性及必要性进行认识。     

China’s value-added tax reform,firm behavior and performance

China reformed value-added tax (VAT) by removing investment from the tax base in northeastern provinces in 2004, which is a “natural experiment” of its tax system. Using difference-in-differences method, this paper for the first time investigates the impact of VAT reform on China firms’ fixed asset investment, employment behavior, innovative activities, and productivity, and furthermore discusses the impact of firm behavior on industrial structural upgrade and employment with a firm-level panel data of large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China. We find that VAT reform significantly promotes firms’ fixed asset investment, and increases firms’ capital-labor ratio and productivity; while enhancement of firms’ productivity is mainly achieved by means of substituting labor with capital, rather than independent technology innovation; meanwhile, VAT reform distinctly decreases employment. Our findings have essential policy implications on the extension of VAT reform in the entire China.     

The Political Power of Big Business: A Response to Bell and Hindmoor

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in debates about the power of business (Culpepper 2011 Culpepper, P. (2011). Quiet Politics and Business Power: Corporate Control in Europe and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]; Bell 2012 Bell, S. (2012). The Power of Ideas: The Ideational Mediation of the Structural Power of Business. International Studies Quarterly, 56(4), 661–73. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2012.00743.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Bell and Hindmoor (2013 Bell, S., Hindmoor, A. (2013). The Structural Power of Business and the Power of Ideas: The Strange Case of the Australian Mining Tax. New Political Economy, ,forthcoming. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2013.796452 [19 (3), pp. 470–486, cross-references updated] [Google Scholar]) make an important, theoretically informed, but empirically rooted, contribution to that debate. In this response, we address both aspects of their contribution, arguing that their treatment of Lindblom is partial and, consequently, so is their explanation of the case. As such, we largely rely on their narrative of the evolution of the Australian mining tax, focusing first on critically examining Bell and Hindmoor's theoretical position, before turning to their analysis of the case.     

Local tax interaction and endogenous spatial weights based on quality of life

This paper studied the role of municipal quality of life as a driver of strategic tax interactions among local governments. A number of studies point out the existence of strategic interactions using spatial econometric models in which the spatial weights are mostly based on non-economic criteria or basic economic variables such as per capita gross domestic product (GDP). We propose the more sophisticated well-being indicator of municipal quality of life as the driver for these interactions. To deal with the potential endogeneity, we rely on instrumental variable estimators. The empirical analysis focuses on the main local tax in Spain (property) and on municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, and it confirms the relevance of differentials in quality of life for the understanding of tax choices.     

地方财政压力与投资多样性——基于所得税分享改革的研究

利用企业所得税分享改革构建强度倍差模型,使用1997—2012年全国地级市数据,检验了地方财政压力对于投资多样性的影响及相关传导机制。结果表明,地方财政压力不利于投资多样性的提高;在财政压力下,地方容易形成偏向房地产行业的投资倾向。然而,不同地区地方财政压力对投资结构的影响存在异质性。经济发展水平较低的地区在财政压力下更容易降低投资多样性;而经济发展水平高的地区应对财政压力时,更倾向于通过多元化投资的方式做大税基、减轻财政压力。优化分税制结构、建立地方性税种能缓解地方财政压力,对于改变地方“房地产集中型”投资结构有一定的积极作用。     

分税财政体制下的地方税体系健全探究

1994年税制改革并实行分税财政体制后建立起了现行地方税体系。随着我国经济体制改革的深入和经济建设的迅速发展,地方税体系在税权划分、税种设置及税收征管方面存在的问题日益显露。针对这些问题,在总结国外地方税体系建设经验基础上,结合我国的实际情况,提出相应健全措施。