论民国时期的营业税税率与税负

营业税是民国时期从西方引进的一种现代税收制度,随国家政治与社会经济形势的变化而不断调整。作为税收制度的核心要素,民国时期营业税税率经历了从北洋政府时期的定额税率向南京政府时期的比例税率的转变。在南京国民政府的分税制体制下,地方营业税税率设计存在差别比例税率和单一比例税率两种模式。抗战和内战期间,国民政府逐步统一及大幅提高营业税税率以增加财政收入。营业税纳税人实际税负的增加是税率因素与非税率因素共同作用的结果。民国时期营业税在成为政府重要收入来源的同时,也给工商业经济和普通民众带来沉重的税收负担。     

INFLATION, PROGRESSIVITY, AND STATE INCOME TAX REVENUES

The combination of progressive income tax structures and inflation has led to significant increases in state income tax revenues. While the federal government has de facto indexed the federal personal income tax, states have generated large relative and absolute increases in their income tax revenues. This paper shows that the ratio of income tax revenues to personal income has grown significantly more in states with progressive income tax structures than those with proportional tax structures. Almost half of such increases may be attributed to inflation. The increase in the relative share of income tax as a source of state revenues has recently run into resistance in some states which have installed income tax indexation measures. This may suggest that the marginal cost of raising revenue through inflation, relative to other means (taxes), is reaching its limits.     

STATE REVENUE ELASTICITY AND EXPENDITURE GROWTH

Recent analyses and theories of public choice suggest faster public sector expansion in states with highly elastic revenue structures. This paper estimates the contribution of elasticity of tax revenues to the growth of expenditures in the 50 American states since 1960, based on elasticity measures for state revenue sources compiled by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, an index of state tax structural change, and controls for federal aid to states, population increase, and per capita growth in real income. Results for 1960-1970 show a small positive relationship between revenue elasticity and expenditure growth, but this becomes weak and negative for 1970-1976. Spending has increased most in states with the least elastic revenue sources; these states have made considerable changes in tax laws, while states with elastic revenue sources have been more likely to cut taxes than to increase spending. Federal aid, rather than tax elasticity, is the best predictor of state expenditure growth, while legislative changes in tax structure have enabled states to keep pace with rising demand for revenue due to growth in population and real income.     

社会保障与收入公平分配的关联性研究

社会保障作为实施国民收入再分配的一种手段和方式,与收入公平分配之间存在正相关。但在实践中,社会保障的具体实施又在一定程度上进一步加剧了收入分配的不公,与收入公平分配又存在负相关。为实现收入公平分配,必须采取相应的对策,以强化社会保障与收入公平分配的正相关,弱化社会保障在实践中存在的与收入公平分配的负相关。     

Direct Taxation and State–Society Relations in Lagos,Nigeria

Existing research suggests that external sources of finance, such as foreign aid and natural resource rents, allow states to generate revenue independently of their societies, disincentivizing them from forming close links with their citizens and severely problematizing the notion of a social contract. In Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, a series of personal income tax reforms have seen an increase in taxpayer compliance. Considering Lagosians’ perceptions of their relation with the state government, this study examines whether the state had to ‘earn’ its revenue by developing a closer relationship with its citizens, and whether citizens responded through a greater willingness to pay tax. It explores how citizens understand this relationship, what role they perceive themselves to fulfil, and what their expectations are for the future of state–society relations. The study shows how, through efforts to visibly link tax to service delivery, a social contract is emerging between Lagos State and its citizens — but that this relationship differs among groups, in that it is shaped by pre‐existing concepts of public organization and modes of political engagement.     

Financing Decentralized Development in a Low‐Income Country: Raising Revenue for Local Government in Uganda

Uganda has been engaged for a number of years in an ambitious programme of political and financial decentralization involving significantly expanded expenditure and service delivery responsibilities for local governments in what are now forty‐five districts. Fiscal decentralization has involved allocation of block grants from the centre to complement increased local tax revenue‐raising efforts by districts and municipalities. This article is concerned with the financial side of decentralization and in particular with an examination of district government efforts to raise revenue with the tax instruments which have been assigned to them. These are found to be deficient in a number of ways and their tax raising potential not to be commensurate with the responsibilities being devolved. Achievement of the decentralization aims laid down, therefore, must depend either on the identification of new or modified methods of raising revenue locally, or increased commitment to transfer of financial resources from the centre, or both.     

Decentralization,Local Taxation and Citizenship in Senegal

This article deals with the politics of revenue collection in a framework of decentralization, democratization and multiparty politics as experienced in the small village of Barkedji in the pastoral region of Senegal. In Senegal, revenue collection has recently been transferred from state administrators to locally elected councillors. Contrary to the assumption of the ‘good governance’ doctrine, this transfer of responsibility has not resulted in a strengthening of democratic structures where taxpayers demand (and gain) public services and more political representation in exchange for increasing taxes. In Barkedji, as elsewhere in Senegal, tax‐compliance hit rock‐bottom after tax collection became the responsibility of local councillors. Meanwhile other types of local institutions, with less clear state relations, are able to mobilize large amounts of revenue outside the normal tax channels for the provision of goods and service. These non‐state institutions seem to have taken over as providers of political representation as well as suppliers of public goods and of access or rights to crucial local resources. The article explores the motivation among first‐comers and newcomer populations to adopt or reject tax requirements to different types of organizations, and discusses the implications of this parallel tax collection for the exercise of public authority and the crafting of state and citizenry.     

The Tax Threshold: Policy, Principles, and Poverty

In the absence of an independent poverty standard, postwar Britishgovernments have tended to use current, politically determinedsocial security scales (from Unemployment Assistance in the1930s to Income Support today) as their definition of minimallyadequate income levels, commonly known as an ‘officialpoverty line’. A basic principle of taxation since thedays of Adam Smith, however, has been that incomes below theminimum income required for socially defined necessities shouldbe free of tax. The personal tax allowance which determinesthe income tax-paying threshold thus also provides a practicaldefinition of such an official poverty line. Royal Commissionsand official committees since the nineteenth century have endorsedSmith's principle, but it only acquired major political significanceafter the Second World War when income tax began to affect lowearners, particularly after the 1960s when poverty was ‘rediscovered’in the UK. In spite of this potential coincidence of purpose,a review of evidence and interviews with officials shows thatthere has been no co-ordination of policy between the Treasuryand Inland Revenue responsible for determining the level ofthe tax allowances, and the Social Security ministries responsiblefor the minimum benefit scales. The tax threshold has consequentlycontinued to be determined by considerations of political economyand administration and not by the alleviation of poverty. ^* This paper is part of a larger project on concepts of povertyand need in British income maintenance systems, chiefly the‘Assistance’ schemes which ran from 1934 to 1966.I am grateful to the many people who have helped with the project,regrettably too numerous to name here. I am particularly indebtedto Sir Norman Price and Sir Kenneth Stowe, James Meade, DellaNevitt, and). Leonard Nicholson for information on the tax issues,and want to record my thanks to them and to Fran Bennett, JohnHills, Chris Pond, and Adrian Sinfield, and especially RodneyLowe, as well as participants in seminars at the Universitiesof Edinburgh and Essex, and in Budapest, for their advice onthis paper.     

1894—1914年俄国酒销售垄断的初衷及效果

俄国一直面临着既要保证税收又要减少酗酒的艰巨任务。俄国预算中酒税收入举足轻重;而俄国人酗酒成风,成为严重的社会问题。俄国为了保证稳定的酒税收入,交替运用国家垄断、包税制和消费税形式,其中酒垄断因简单易行和效果明显而历时最长。政府热衷于酒税收入的同时,也助长了酗酒。1894年财政大臣维特实施的酒销售垄断,名为解决酗酒问题和恢复良好民风,实为增加国家岁入。税收目标和社会目标实难两全,这是认识和评价此次酒销售垄断的关键所在;而数百年来俄罗斯人沿袭下来的饮酒习俗则是滋生酗酒的土壤,解决酗酒问题绝非一朝一夕之事。     

THE MARKET VALUE OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS IN ALTERNATIVE FISCAL REGIMES*

ABSTRACT Land price differentials have long been used as a proxy for the value of environmental improvements in cost/benefit analysis. Both the empirical and theoretical literatures have largely ignored two important facts, however: Taxes financing local improvements are often distortionary, and amenities which influence property values in turn impact the fiscal budget, and hence the tax rate and final economic burden. Put another way, the economic cost of an improvement is endogenous to both the amenity level and the revenue structure. Extending the story in this direction for a system of open or closed spatial cities, the paper finds land rent measures to be a biased measure of the willingness to pay for amenities financed by either head taxes (benefit taxes), property taxes (excise taxes), or highway tolls (user fees). These results are used to correct the conventional specification of empirical property value regression models, which traditionally account for neither tax revenue effects nor the excess burden of distortionary taxation.     

THE IMPACT OF SPECIFIC-SECTOR CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, LABOR MARKET PERFORMANCE AND MIGRATION

ABSTRACT.  It is common in empirical regional economics to use total employment as an explanatory variable while investigating issues such as the level and distribution of income and migration. This paper argues that sector-specific changes in employment and labor market performance can have different effects on economic growth, the collection of tax revenue, migration, and the level and distribution of household income. As such, it is important to model sectors separately. We find that expansions in employment opportunities for a high-wage sector such as computer manufacturing or bioengineering, a medium-wage sector manufacturing, and the lower-wage sector of retailing have differing economic consequences for a small city. We use a data intensive computable general equilibrium model to obtain these results.     

“借口”:中国城市资本高度集聚的政治经济学分析框架

面对改革开放以来中国快速城市化现象,本文从中国投资拉动的经济增长模式出发,发现中国城市存在着高度积累,特别是行政级别高的城市持续投资增长的现象,在分析投资、投资效率与大型事件关系的基础上,提出了官员晋升竞标赛和财政分权预算约束条件下的制度机会主义行为假设,认为大型事件不过是政府构建的一个有利于在城市体系下,通过打破传统的政府预算约束,实现资本高度集中促进经济持续增长的制度机会主义行为。"借口"模式旨在揭示大型事件现象背后的政治与经济激励,并以2010年广州举办亚运会为例,按政府构建—突破约束—官员晋升的结构,分析了广州市政府构建全社会共识,举办亚运会带来巨额投资促进城市发展实现政治与经济激励的事实,为"借口"模式提供了实证的案例。最后,对"借口"模式的未来趋势进行了探讨。     

Apparatus of capture: Fiscal state formation in the republic of Georgia

How did the rate of central government tax revenue more than triple in the (post-Soviet) Republic of Georgia over 2004–2007? This paper investigates fiscal state formation in Georgia using ethnographic fieldwork to document how the reformist government brought to power by the 2003 “Rose Revolution” impelled tax compliance using a set of tactics of anti-corruption, anti-tax evasion, individual accountability, and compromising information collected through extra-legal surveillance. The use of ethnographic methods to examine the recent and rapid process of state formation in Georgia is a departure from much of the extant literature on state formation, which is dominated by historical scholarship that examines relatively long-term processes of political and economic change culminating in the present state. In contrast, the approach taken here uses the Deleuzian concept of assemblage to examine how the state is a process of continuous formation. The fast emergence of a historically unprecedented scale of tax compliance in Georgia was the result of the application of particular techniques of government that assembled micro-subjective dispositions into a macro-institutional process of revenue capture.     

中国环境税负空间累进性测度及其影响效应分析

本文从人文地理学的社会空间公正理念出发,以经济学的"蓝色红利"视角为切入点,探讨了中国区域环境税负空间差异问题。研究表明我国环境税负空间累进性与区域经济发展水平存在显著的正相关关系。经济区域中,北部沿海、东部沿海、东北、黄河中游以及南部沿海地区的环境税负空间累进性指数较大,长江中游、西南及西北地区则表现出负的空间溢出效应,环境税加大了区域间的收入差距;传统三大区域中,东部地区和中部地区的环境税负具有空间累进特性。此外,西部地区的资源税起到了更好的税收调节作用。资源成本的增加促使使用者提高资源利用效率,抑制需求,有助于将资源消费控制在一个合理的水平,实现收入的合理分配和不可再生资源的可持续利用。排污费则扭曲了税收分配机制,降低了生产要素的配置效率。鉴于此,从新区域主义的"统筹理念"出发,提出了构建区域环境税负空间公正性的设计机制。     

Globalisation and the dilemmas of income taxation in Australia

Over the past two decades there has been a worldwide fall in statutory corporate tax (CT) rates. Focusing on Australia, this article establishes three empirical facts which challenge much of the existing literature. First, CT competition was the crucial driving force behind CT cuts. Second, policy makers had to abandon tax‐related investment incentives in order to pay for lower CT rates. This broadening of the CT base is costly, because it potentially disadvantages domestic firms and may, over the longer term, erode the CT base. Third, CT cuts have put pressure on the personal income tax base, as low corporate rates provide tax avoidance opportunities for high‐income earners.     

Not My Taxes! Explaining Tax Resistance and its Implications for Australia's Welfare State

In discussing Australia's need to increase taxes to pay for future social security, Michael Keating worries that voters see taxes as a ‘burden’ and that ‘the link between taxation and citizenship has been broken’. This paper deals with the problem of tax resistance (preferring lower taxes even when tax cuts risk public services) for Australia's welfare state. First, I describe how two Australian fiscal institutions—a residual welfare system and visible income taxes—promote tax resistance among voters. Second, I draw on these insights to develop several explanations for tax resistance: voter self-interest, voter hostility to minorities, voter disengagement (low trust and lack of interest in politics), and individualistic attitudes. The main conclusion is that tax resistance in Australia is institutionalised, making it easier to mobilise interests around low taxes, and harder to advocate for alternatives. Results of multivariate analysis using AES 2004 data indicate that an ‘anti-tax coalition’ can build on three diverse publics; one of higher and middle-income earners attuned to self-interest, another hostile to welfare beneficiaries, and another ‘tuned out’ of politics and willing to support any call for tax cuts. Inevitably, the debate about the welfare state is shadowed by a debate about voter willingness to pay taxes that finance it.     

20世纪30年代国民政府对鲁豫皖手工卷烟业的“整理”

20世纪30年代,鲁豫皖手工卷烟业迅速发展,增加了农民收入,繁荣了地方经济,满足了社会需求,促进了农村经济发展。但其对机制卷烟业也造成极大冲击,并严重影响国家税收。出于维护机制卷烟业正常发展和国家税收考虑,国民政府着手对三省手工卷烟业进行"整理",采取了一系列措施,但收效不甚明显;便又采取了取缔手工卷烟的措施。由于手工卷烟户的抗拒,地方政府的不配合,地方税务机关查禁无力,取缔工作难以展开。1937年抗日战争爆发,打断了国民政府对手工卷烟业的"整理"。     

TAXATION AND INTERNAL MIGRATION—EVIDENCE FROM THE SWISS CENSUS USING COMMUNITY‐LEVEL VARIATION IN INCOME TAX RATES*

ABSTRACT We investigate the relationship between income tax rate variation and internal migration for the unique case of Switzerland, whose system of determining tax rates primarily at the community level results in enough variation to permit analysis of their influence on migration. Specifically, using Swiss census data, we analyze migratory responses to tax rate variations for various groups defined by age, education, and nationality/residence permit. The results suggest that young Swiss college graduates are most sensitive to tax rate differences, but the estimated effects are not large enough to offset the revenue‐increasing effect of a rise in tax rate. The migratory responses of foreigners and other age‐education groups are even smaller, and reverse causation seems negligible.     

论美国文官群体的历史演变

19世纪80年代以来,随着美国历史的发展,以文官制度的逐步完善为契机,文官群体的政治角色、经济地位、价值观念以及社会影响都发生了很大的变化,逐步朝着成为美国社会中的一个独立阶层的方向发展。首先,从"政治附庸"发展到"行政主管",文官群体的政治角色发生转换,其政治势力得以迅速膨胀;其次,从收入菲薄到待遇优厚,文官群体的经济地位得到提升,政府的财政负担也随之加重;再次,从"官本位"发展到"权本位",文官群体形成了带有现代官僚特征的价值取向,同时也开始蜕变为一个有人格缺失的群体;最后,从声名狼藉到公众认可,文官群体不仅扩大了社会影响,而且也在新的层面上形成了真正的官僚主义。     

近二十年来中国社会稳定研究述评

社会稳定问题是事关改革开放和现代化建设的关键问题。在相当长的一段时间里,理论界关于社会稳定的研究囿于意识形态和政治因素,局限在狭小的范围,甚至有些领域被视为研究的禁区。随着改革的日益纵深,各种社会矛盾凸显,诸如农民因税费负担引发的抗争、工人因下岗失业引发的抗争、业主因权利受损引发的抗争等问题都亟需理论上的解释和说明。为此,研究者们从不同角度、不同层面对社会稳定问题进行了理论探讨,取得了不少有价值的成果。