How Sensitive is FDI to Differences in Corporate Income Taxation within the EU?

Differences between corporate taxation of EU member states drive a wedge between after-tax and pre-tax productivity. This implies that productivity could be increased by reallocating capital from low-tax to high-tax member states. Moreover, the integration of the EU capital market may trigger tax competition among member states. The responsiveness of investors to taxation is crucial for the importance of both the misallocation of capital and the extent of tax competition. In this paper we measure this responsiveness by examining the relation between FDI positions and effective corporate income tax rates. Our estimates show that investors from one EU member state increase their FDI position in another EU member state by approximately four percent if the latter decreases its effective corporate income tax rate by one percentage point relative to the European mean.     

关于税收筹划的几个认识问题

如何正确认识税收筹划,直接关系到税收筹划在我国能否得到广泛推介和有效实施的问题。本文拟从几个层面阐述对税收筹划的粗浅认识。     

东北地区增值税转型的效应分析

增值税转型已经在东北地区试点,通过试点考验财政承受能力,把握对投资的刺激作用以及税改可能引发的问题,为在全国展开增值税转型积累经验,那么东北试点的效应就有重要的借鉴意义。本文围绕税改的目的分析了税改对投资、就业、财政等方面的效应,并得到对财政的影响不大,投资引导明显,企业实际效果不佳,增值税转型正副效应兼有等结论。国家需要对转型政策和其他配套政策同步完善,在确保财政收入的前提下,减少振荡,逐步推进。     

Rural Informal Taxation in China： Historical Evolution and an Analytic Framework

The present paper examines the historical evolution of China's rural taxation system from the pre-reform period to the late 1990s. We propose that because of information asymmetry between the upper-level and the lower-level governments, local governments had to be granted some informal tax autonomy to fulfill the upper-level policy mandates. This easily led to excessive local informal taxation on farmers. As market liberalization of the grain sector progressed, the low-cost tax instruments implemented through the traditional approach of implicit taxation gradually eroded. Local governments in agricultural regions had to resort to informal fees collected directly from individual rural households while the more industrialized regions shifted to non-agricultural taxes that are less costly in terms of tax collection. Hence, political tension between farmers and local governments in agriculture- based regions emerged and rural tax reform became necessary.     

Welfare-Improving Carbon Dioxide Tax Reform Taking Externality and Location into Account

Using Swedish household data from 1992, I analyze whether households disproportionately burdened by an increased carbon dioxide tax can be compensated by changes in other commodity taxes. This is done by searching for Dalton–improving tax reforms (DI-reforms), a method for welfare analysis which requires only ranking of households rather than cardinal comparisons. This application of the method has two features not found in earlier applications. First, the direct value of reduced carbon dioxide emissions is incorporated in the analysis. Second, the method is extended to allow identification of three-dimensional tax reforms, to be able to rank households along three dimensions. It is found that i) incorporating the value of reduced emissions does not unambiguously expand the set of DI-reforms, and ii) DI-reforms exist only when households are ranked in line with expenditures and size. When households' access to public transportation is also considered no DI-reforms are found.     

20世纪80年代以来日本税制改革综述

现行日本税制形成于第二次世界大战后的经济改革时期，对日本经济的恢复和发展起到了积极的作用。但进入20世纪80年代以来，日本税制越来越无法适应时代的要求。伴随着经济、社会形势的变化，自80年代末以消费税的引进为开始，日本进行了一系列以财政健全化和经济活性化为目的的税制改革．进入2000年以来，小泉政府对税制改革寄与了更高的期望，希望通过相应的税收调整来应对经济的不振。因为面对当前的财政困境，可采取的政策手段已很有限，能对当前景气对策起到明显作用的惟有税收政策．     

The Distributional Effects of Indirect Tax Changes in Italy

This paper evaluatesthe distributional and welfare effects of two recent changesof Value Added Tax (VAT) and excise taxes in Italy applying andcomparing two related and complementary methods of analysis:the first based on the distributional characteristics of Feldstein(1972) and recently applied by Newbery (1995); the second basedon the theory of marginal dominance developed by Mayshar andYitzhaki (1996). The paper finds no evidence that the reformshave redistributed purchasing power among households. But themost striking result is that a simpler two-rate VAT structure,set according to the European directives on VAT coordination,could have replaced the present system producing the same revenueand increasing welfare. This last result provides a clear instancein which reducing the number of VAT rates can be welcome evenin the presence of distributional concerns.     

论土地增值税“清算制”对我国房地产市场的影响

本文论述了我国土地增值税的主要内容及其征收方式的演变过程,分析了土地增值税从以预征缴纳为主改变为清算制可能对房地产市场产生的影响,研究了在清算制执行过程中可能出现的问题,并提出了相应的政策建议。     

The incentive to locate a multinational firm: The effect of tax reforms in the United Kingdom

The advent of the single European market has focused attention on the structure of international tax incentives for the location of multinational business. Multinationals that channel foreign income through the United Kingdom have been likely to suffer double taxation in the form of surplus advance corporation tax when they subsequently distribute the income to a foreign parent. This paper shows that the 1993 U.K. tax reforms create a significant reduction in the tax cost of locating in the United Kingdom, relative to traditionally favorable tax regimes such as the Netherlands.