EXTERNALITIES AND PARTIAL TAX REFORM: DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO TAX ROAD FREIGHT (BUT NOT PASSENGER) TRANSPORT?*

ABSTRACT Externalities such as pollution and road congestion are jointly produced by the use of intermediate inputs by firms and the consumption of final goods by households. To cope with such externalities, policy proposals often suggest partial tax reforms. This paper uses a simple general equilibrium model to explore the effects of a reform of taxes on freight transport in a second‐best setting. The theoretical model shows that the welfare effect of higher freight taxes is positive, unless passenger transport is severely under‐taxed and the tax reform attracts substantially more passenger transport. Moreover, the optimal freight tax may be below or above marginal external cost. Budgetary neutral tax reform exercises with a numerical simulation model for the U.K. suggest that, under a wide variety of parameter values, higher freight transport taxes are indeed welfare increasing. The welfare gain of freight tax reform rises with the level of the passenger tax, but the optimal freight tax declines at higher taxes on passenger transport. Substantial net benefits of tax reform are obtained only under labor tax recycling of the revenues.     

第二轮志书应当写好改革篇——以《修文县志（1978～2008）》为例

方志界对志书如何更好地记述改革有三种观点：集中记述、分散记述、集中与分散相结合记述。文章以《修文县志（1978～2008）》为例,主张采用政治部类集中,经济、文化部类分散的方式记述改革。同时,记述改革要在篇目上体现时代特色;充分占有反映改革内容的资料,深入基层收集鲜活的资料;要以精炼的文笔、时代的语言完整地记述改革。     

Norms,coercion and contracting in the struggle against ‘harmful’ tax competition

The world's richest and most powerful countries have become increasingly concerned about revenue lost to tax havens, and fear that tax competition might spark a fiscal ‘race to the bottom’, yet they have failed to pressure much smaller and weaker tax haven states into reform. This article argues that the OECD-sponsored campaign against ‘harmful’ tax competition has been unsuccessful because regulative norms have severely constrained the means legitimately able to be employed. Early decisions on how the campaign was designed subsequently brought norms into play which have not only ruled out the use of coercion, but also the use of side payments, despite the massive potential benefits available to both sides from a deal between tax havens and OECD states. The failure to strike a deal cannot be explained by high transaction costs nor by corporate lobbying in defence of tax shelters. Regulative norms can thus affect economic bargaining in the international arena by preventing mutually advantageous exchanges that are nevertheless regarded as inappropriate.     

邓小平、陈云的改革思想比较

邓小平、陈云在中国改革开放的实践探索中,对为什么要改革、怎样改革、改革的任务与目的、改革的性质、改革成败的评判标准等重要问题,都有明确的观点和系统的论述。这些观点和论述有共性,也有差异,有区别,也有联系,对中国改革开放都产生了积极而深远的影响。邓、陈改革思想中的大同,主要是由二人的经历类似、信仰一致决定的。邓、陈改革思想中的小异,主要是由二人的性格特点、工作方法和所处的具体位置不同决定的。这种差异具有互补的作用。邓、陈的互相配合与互补,是中国新时期改革开放和现代化建设新局面得以开辟并取得巨大成就的重要因素之一。     

我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响机理及影响状况研究

营业税改增值税是我国实施结构性减税政策的重要改革方向。上海已经开始试点,试点范围将由上海市分批扩大至北京、天津、江苏、浙江、安徽、福建、湖北、广东、厦门和深圳10个省、直辖市、计划单列市,并将选择部分行业在全国范围试点。未来,营业税改增值税很可能向旅游服务业推广。在上述背景下,需要研究下列前沿性理论问题：我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响机理是什么？我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响状况是什么？本文运用不同税收特点及影响分析理论,探讨了我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响机理,并通过对上海典型旅游企业的调查研究,分析了我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响特点与影响状况。针对我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税的影响特点与状况,提出了我国旅游服务业营业税改增值税税率与存量固定资产进项税抵扣等的建议。     

Radicals,Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67*

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a ‘provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania’. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early‐ and mid‐Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the ‘People's Charter’. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the ‘Birmingham school’. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the ‘Manchester school’ and economic liberalism.     

The Tax Policy Regime in American Politics, 1941-1951

This article analyzes the inception of the mass income tax during the Second World War as a decisive moment when relations among state, market, and citizens were reconfigured in a durable way. The state institutionalized the means to devise tax reform–a policy regime–during this formative period of partisan conflict over macroeconomic management strategies. The approach to policy analysis presented here illuminates the process by which political choices are made among competing policy visions embedded in state agencies. This study demonstrates that a policy regime perspective, when applied in a complementary way with interest-driven or institutionalist accounts, is best equipped to bring important but tacit constraints into clear analytical focus.     

Taxing the Poor: The Politics of Income Taxation in Ireland

Income tax is the largest single means of generating revenue in modern states, and its impact is felt by virtually all members of society. How it is levied is therefore a matter of the highest political significance. Yet countries vary greatly in the manner in which they allocate the burden of paying income tax. In Ireland, the profile of income tax has changed dramatically throughout the course of economic modernization, since about 1960. By 1980 it was generally agreed that employees were carrying too much of the burden, especially those on fairly low incomes. Steady growth in recent years has enabled governments to cut tax rates while still bringing in rising revenue. But shifting the distribution of tax has proved very difficult, and tax reform has tended to favor the wealthy most. This article draws on comparative political science literature to highlight the political and institutional variables relevant to explaining these trends.
"The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as fairly as he can" (Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, (Liberal), Hansard, 1870, April 11, col. 1639).     

Are Ukraine’s reforms breaking its state capture? An agenda for genuine change

Abstract

Ukraine is one of a handful of post-communist countries that has a lower Gross Domestic Product today than in 1990, according to the World Bank. The problem is that it has seen too little reform. The country has experienced three serious periods of reform, but none has been as important as the reforms of 2015. The big question is whether Ukraine has finally broken out of persistent state capture. This paper by long-lasting Ukraine-watcher Anders Åslund suggests that Ukraine has carried out greater economic reforms than ever before with the unification of energy prices, large budget cuts, floating exchange rates, halved payroll tax, and a major bank purge. Yet, the question remains whether Ukraine has really broken out of state capture and whether it will be able to turn to a steady course of high economic growth of 5–7% a year.     

Strategies for Regulatory Reform: Forward Compared to Backward Mapping

Most efforts to reform regulation have relied on a forward mapping strategy, which views policy design and implementation from the top down. The limited success of many such reform efforts suggests the need for an alternative approach, based on a backward mapping strategy. The advantages of such a strategy are that it brings affected stakeholders into the process of designing and implementing reforms; proceeds incrementally to build a consensus for change; and leads to proposals that allow greater discretion and flexibility at the ground level, which is the direction that nearly all critics of existing regulation argue should be taken. Recent initiatives in environmental policy illustrate the uses and potential strengths of a backward mapping strategy for regulatory reform.     

Upper House Reform in the United Kingdom and Australia

Discussion of upper house reform in the United Kingdom has been relatively muted in recent years, given the House of Lords' status as the world's last hereditary second chamber. However, a reform in 1999 removed the bulk of hereditary peers from the chamber and started a process of reflection about the appropriate role, functions and composition of the upper house. Fundamental questions arise about the power of the respective chambers at Westminster, the power of the government's mandate, and the possible territorial role of the upper house given the new devolution settlement. This paper describes recent developments, and contrasts the recent reform debate in the United Kingdom with the ongoing Senate reform debate in Australia. It discusses the extent to which views are converging and the likely outcomes of reform.     

Making EMU a success

One year has elapsed since the European Monetary Union was created between eleven of the fifteen European Union member states. During 1999 the economic prospects for euroland have dramatically improved, with projected growth in 2000 and 2001 well above earlier expectations. This article argues that the recovery, by itself, cannot solve Europe's unemployment problem, neither can monetary union per se, despite its substantial benefits. The authors discuss these benefits and assess the current economic situation in Europe. They recommend a bold, coordinated approach, a growth pact for Europe, based on the three complementary legs: substantial tax cuts; an accommodating monetary policy; and structural reform. They discuss the conditions in which such a pact would be successful.     

我国地方税制的历史沿革与发展探析

地方税制是国家税收制度的组成部分 ,国家进行税制调整常引起地方税制的变化 ,税制调整又与财政体制的变化相关联。由于地方税制是以中央与地方分财权为前提 ,因此确立什么样的中央与地方的财政分配关系直接决定着地方税制是否存在 ,以及地方税制的存在形式。财政体制发生变化 ,地方税制必然随之变化 ,税制调整和财政体制调整往往是交织在一起的。文章在回顾与总结我国税收制度发展和改革历程的基础上 ,探讨了地方税制产生和发展以及运行的一般规律 ,并对进一步完善地方税体系 ,使地方税收活动规范化、民主化、科学化提出了设想     

新时期私营、个体经济税收政策与制度的变迁

20世纪80年代中期,随着一部分个体经营者先富裕起来,个人收入差距明显加大,党和政府开始注意运用税收手段(主要是所得税)调节个人收入差距。1994年税制改革统一了不同所有制的内资企业的所得税,由于政策导向明确,非公有制经济与公有制经济的税收差别逐步减少,逐步重新确认了公平税负的原则——社会主义市场经济中的税收基本原则。近年来内外资企业所得税率的统一,进一步体现了这一原则的精神。     

清末民初酒税制度因革论

清末财政困窘,支出浩繁,政府在维持旧有税收的同时,力图开辟新的税源,并因应时势而不断变化,酒税从厘捐到烟酒税这样的变化就体现了这一发展历程。民国初创,面临的财政危机依然如故,酒税征收仍然沿习清末旧制,弊病百出。当政者对酒税制度重新设计,意欲将其纳入国家财政收支系统的正轨。对原有酒税加以改革,举办公卖制度开征公卖费,新征烟酒牌照税,构成了民国初年酒税制度的主要内容。然而由于各种各样的原因,这一努力并没有达到制度设计者的初衷。     

The Electoral Politics of Economic Reform in Australia: The 1998 Election

Like many other advanced industrial democracies, Australia has experienced major and ongoing economic reform over the last two decades, the pace of which has, if anything, increased since the election of the Liberal‐National government in 1996. These developments have led to a growing sense of economic insecurity among many voters. Many of these concerns were focused on the 1998 election, when the Liberal‐National Coalition advocated the introduction of a goods and services tax. This paper uses the 1998 Australian Election Study (AES) survey to examine the impact of economic evaluations, economic insecurity and economic issues on voting in the election. The results demonstrate the existence of widespread economic concerns across the electorate, but that the Coalition gained a marginal electoral advantage on the tax reform issue. Economic issues were also a cause of defection to the new One Nation Party, although further analysis reveals that its support was motivated more by race and ethnic concerns than by economic discontent.     

Party convergence reconsidered

That the major parties in Australia have converged is an idea of long standing. But proponents of the idea differ about when it happened, why it happened and what its consequences might be. In revisiting the party convergence thesis, this article does three things. First, it documents the recurrent nature of this thesis and its varying terms, arguing that claims of convergence: focus on some criteria while ignoring others; confuse movements in policy space with changes in party distance; and involve an implicit essentialism, so that any two parties that share an ideology are assumed to share policy positions that can be derived from that ideology. Second, it reviews studies of election speeches since the war, and studies of government expenditure patterns and tax schedules from Whitlam to Hawke, which cast doubt on, or heavily qualify, the idea that the parties have converged or lost their traditional distinctiveness. Third, it shows that on these matters the views of voters are closer to those of the policy analysts than to those of the pundits. Survey respondents continue to distinguish between the parties on particular policies and in Left–Right terms, they care who wins, and they think the party that wins matters.     

从“社”到“庄”:清代前期山东寿光县顺庄法的推行

清康熙年间,山东寿光县为缓解"大差"负担,将"大差"由轮当制改为下放给各社自理,但这进一步加重了民间劈社的窘境。乾隆年间知县王椿在缺少土地记录的情况下,采用"顺庄法"重整地方组织,缓解赋税征收的困境。以百姓实际居住的"庄",取代官方登记的里甲组织"社",作为税收登记与征收的基本单位。同时,这也形成了山东以"村庄"为基层组织的地方社会。因南北土地分布状况的差异,顺庄法在山东与江南显示出不同的形态与结果。     

LEADERS,FOLLOWERS, AND ASYMMETRIC LOCAL TAX POLICY DIFFUSION

Complementing recent theoretical models of tax competition with endogenous leadership, we empirically model local policy diffusion as a dynamic asymmetric process. Using a setting where local option sales taxes rapidly transitioned from nonexistence to ubiquity, we construct a policy leadership index to classify jurisdictions as leaders or followers. Using models that control for vertical tax competition effects, we show how asymmetric leader–follower dynamics characterize horizontal tax competition over the three decades that follow. A placebo test further supports our main conclusions. This methodological approach could be adapted to other settings where policies exhibit both extensive and intensive margins.     

Sparse,Inconsistent and Unreliable: Tax Records and the World Inequality Report 2018

This article reviews the World Inequality Report 2018, a large collaborative data project based on the work of Thomas Piketty and the late Anthony Atkinson, which critiques the entire literature of inequality measurement from survey data and purports to provide superior, unprecedented and reliable coverage of income and wealth inequalities over the entire world, based primarily on tax records. The article examines three major issues: the coverage provided by tax data in the world economy, the consistency of tax data with other sources of information on income inequality, and the peculiarities of tax‐based measurement of inequality in the United States. Then a comparison is made with measures drawn from other forms of administrative data — specifically payroll records — which are generally more consistent with records of inequality measured in household surveys than are tax records. Following this, the article discusses the analysis of wealth and wealth inequality before offering a few closing remarks about policy.