Capital gains lock-in and governance choices

Differences in accrued gains and investors’ tax-sensitivity induce variation in a capital gains lock-in effect across mutual funds even for the same stock at the same time. Exploiting this variation, we show this effect influences funds’ governance decisions: higher capital gains decrease the likelihood a fund exits prior to contentious votes and increase the likelihood a fund votes against management. Consistent with tax motivation, these findings are concentrated among funds with tax-sensitive investors. Further, high aggregate capital gains across funds holding a stock predict a higher likelihood management loses a vote and a lower likelihood a contentious vote is proposed.     

Who benefits from partial tax coordination?

In this paper, we investigate whether partial tax coordination is beneficial to countries within and outside a tax union, in which countries are supposed to compete in taxes and infrastructure. Our results demonstrate that a subgroup of countries agreeing on a common tax rate can harm both member and nonmember states. This is in contrast to the classical findings that partial tax harmonisation is Pareto improving. When a minimum tax rate is imposed within a tax union, we demonstrate that it does not necessarily improve the welfare of the member countries. Moreover, both the high‐tax and low‐tax countries can be worse off. This conclusion is at odds with the classical result that a high‐tax country benefits from the imposition of a lower tax bound.     

Varieties of paternalism and the heterogeneity of utility structures

A principal source of interest in behavioral economics has been its advertised contributions to policies aimed at ‘nudging’ people away from allegedly natural but self-defeating behavior toward patterns of response thought more likely to improve their welfare. This has occasioned controversies among economists and philosophers around the normative limits of paternalism, especially by technical policy advisors. One recent suggestion has been that ‘boosting,’ in which interventions aim to enhance people’s general cognitive skills and representational repertoires instead of manipulating their choice environments behind their backs, avoids the main normative challenges. A limitation in most of this literature is that it has focused on relatively sweeping policy recommendations and consequently on strong polar alternatives of general paternalism and strict laissez faire. We review a real instance, drawn from a consulting project we conducted for an investment bank, of a proposed intervention that is more typical of the kind that economists are more often actually called upon to offer. In this example, the sophistication of current tools for preference attribution, combined with philosophical externalism about the semantics of preferences that makes it less plausible to attribute their literal self-conscious representation to people as propositional attitude content becomes more tightly refined, blocks applicability of the distinction between nudging and boosting. This seems to call for irreducible, context-specific ethical judgment in assessing the appropriateness of the forms of paternalism that economists must actually wrestle with in going about their everyday business.     

欧盟视阈下在线平台中个人数据的增值税处理

近年来,在线平台的迅猛发展推动了全球经济数字化加速转型,但同时也引发了包括增值税政策适用在内的诸多挑战.通过研究《欧盟增值税指令》和欧州法院的判例法,以及分析个人数据与在线平台运行之间的关系可以推断出,个人数据是在线平台提供访问服务构成的增值税应税范围内的供应,且与消费者是否向在线平台支付金钱形式的对价无关.在实践中,使用客观价值方法来确定在线服务供应的应税金额存在实际困难,而使用直接联系标准解决易货交易问题,会导致增值税税基在本质上得到扩张.因此,建议当前不要将在线平台访问服务的供应视为一项应税交易.此外,对于商家为获得消费者数据而向平台付款的情形,因其不符合直接联系标准,也不应被视为服务对价.     

Personal Income Tax Reform in China in 2018 and Its Impact on Income Distribution

In the context of personal income tax (PIT) reform in China in 2018, this paper examines some of the major issues of concern regarding the reform and income distribution. Using the China Personal Income Tax Micro‐simulation model, the paper compares the differences between the 2011 and 2018 PIT systems, and finds that residents relying on different income sources may face a large degree of real tax rate change. Once the tax system is altered to PIT 2018, the coverage of PIT for wage earners will decrease from 46.9 to 23.4 percent, the income redistributive effect will drop from 1.95 to 1.22 percent and the PIT's role in fiscal revenue will also be negatively affected. Nevertheless, if individual income continues to grow, the share of PIT in fiscal revenue is expected to return to the 2018 level in 2022, but its income redistribution function is difficult to recover in the short term. The paper finds that the effect of PIT on income distribution depends on the tax structure. Gradual transition to an “entirely comprehensive” tax system when conditions are appropriate will achieve better income redistribution results at a lower average tax rate.     

R&D Investments and Tax Incentives: The Role of Intra-Firm Cross-Border Collaboration*

U.S. multinational corporations increasingly use intra-firm, cross-border research collaboration to disperse R&D across different countries. This paper investigates the implications of such collaboration on the abilities of firms to garner benefits from R&D tax incentives. We find that the association between R&D intensity and tax incentives is three to five times larger when firms have extensive cross-border collaboration connected to a country. We also find that the effect is stronger when local intellectual property protection is weaker and when local innovation resources are higher. Our results suggest that cross-border collaboration helps firms achieve more tax-efficient R&D investments both by reducing the nontax frictions posed by weak intellectual property protection and by increasing the nontax benefits of foreign R&D.     

Relative risk aversion, relative prudence and comparative statics under uncertainty: The case of (μ, σ)‐preferences

From the expected‐utility approach, relative risk aversion being smaller than one and relative prudence being smaller than two emerge as preference restrictions that fully determine the optimal responses of decisions under uncertainty to certain shifts in probability distributions. We characterize the magnitudes of relative risk aversion and relative prudence in terms of the two‐parameter, mean‐standard deviation approach. We demonstrate that this characterization is instrumental in obtaining comparative static results in the two‐parameter setting. We further relate our findings to the results in the expected‐utility framework.     

对纳税筹划问题的理性思考

纳税筹划近年来日益受到人们的关注,但国内研究多侧重于筹划策略和方法。本文试图从理论上对纳税筹划的必然性、可能性及其经济和社会效应进行较深入的探讨,完善纳税筹划的指导思想,纠正对其错误的认识。     

略论明代武当山香税的征收与管理

明代的香税以泰山和武当山的数量和影响为最。武当山香税的征收始于明孝宗弘治六年（1493年），是明代最早征收香税之地，由湖广布政司和提督太监委派的官员即均州千户所千户和太和宫提点负责。打着维修庙宇的旗号而征收的香税，在嘉靖以后还用于赈济灾荒，抵宗藩、官兵俸粮之不足等事项，正是明代中后期国家政治腐败、财政危机、加派风行的必然结果。     

关于实施增值税汇算清缴的探讨

现行的增值税征收方法,对年度内存货数量变化较大的一般纳税人企业来说还不够完善。该文从增值税的本质出发,对此进行了初步探讨,提出对增值税实施汇算清缴,以弥补其不足之处;同时设计了汇算清缴所需的会计处理方法和会计分录。