Fiscal Studies最新文献

{"title":"Editorial announcement","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12346","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Editors are pleased to welcome Pierre Cahuc, who is joining the Board of Editors at <i>Fiscal Studies</i>. He is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Sciences Po, which he joined in 2018. He is a Research Fellow at CEPR as well as at IZA, where he directs the ‘Labour Markets’ research programme. He also directs Sciences Po's <i>Chaire</i> ‘<i>Sécurisation des parcours professionnels</i>’.</p><p>James Cloyne has ended his service on the Board of Editors at <i>Fiscal Studies</i>. James Banks, Monica Costa Dias, Matthias Parey, Kimberley Scharf and James Ziliak would like to thank him for his enormous contribution to the journal over the years.</p>","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"309"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12346","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50141374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tax equity around the world: a discussion","authors":"Anne Brockmeyer,&nbsp;David Phillips","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12342","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;In his paper ‘Globalisation, taxation and inequality’ in this issue, Gabriel Zucman argues that the current tax system is not appropriate for our times. In particular, the system heavily taxes labour and consumption and largely exempts capital and capital income from taxation. This tax structure is at odds with rising inequality and the high capital share of income for the rich.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Zucman acknowledges that the international community has made progress towards limiting international tax competition and evasion and avoidance, thereby facilitating the taxation of capital. This includes the automatic exchange of information about financial accounts and investments, and the OECD/G20-mediated ‘Pillar 2’ agreement on a global minimum tax on the profits of the largest multinational corporations. However, he argues that these recent global measures on tax avoidance and evasion do not go far enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, Zucman advocates for an improvement and extension of the automatic exchange of information. The system should be expanded to other assets, most importantly real estate, and countries should more systematically deploy the information they receive through the automatic exchange of information in tax enforcement. In addition, the system should expand to cover more countries, especially developing countries, and have an inbuilt mechanism to ensure accurate reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The case for expanding the exchange of information to real estate is clear: the ownership of foreign real estate is a form of wealth that is extremely concentrated at the very top and growing in importance since the automatic exchange of banking information. However, exchanging real-estate information internationally in a coherent manner could be hugely challenging. The exchange of banking information requires information from banks, which are typically thought of as well-organised and technically advanced institutions, that have long had to adhere to international norms, standards and IT systems. Records of real-estate ownership, in contrast, are maintained by local government agencies which typically have less capacity than central governments. Besides, in the context of decentralisation, the format of these local property registers and the manner in which they are maintained can vary widely across municipalities or states.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While it may seem worthwhile to start an exchange of information focused on high-income countries and/or large cities that are attractive targets for real-estate investment, investors are likely to respond by diverting some of their investment towards assets in locations not covered by the exchange of information. After all, Bomare and Le Guern Herry (&lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;) have shown investors respond to the exchange of banking information by shifting into real estate, so they are likely to also be able to shift across real assets in different locations. The exchange of information on real estate would also need to be combined with a ban on the use of s","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"237-241"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12342","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50132255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Progressive taxation in the face of inflation and instability: lessons from Argentina","authors":"Roberto Arias,&nbsp;Vedanth Nair","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12344","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Gabriel Zucman's article in this symposium sets out an agenda for how international cooperation can overcome barriers to progressive taxation and barriers to the taxation of wealth. Argentina has been at the forefront of developments in international tax cooperation. It has been one of the global minimum tax's strongest proponents, and has pushed for it to go even further by increasing the minimum rate to 21 per cent or 25 per cent. Argentina has also made use of automatic exchange of information (AEOI) to detect offshore tax evasion, signing AEOI agreements with almost 100 countries. AEOI has had modest results for Argentina. Zucman's article notes that offshore real estate is exempted under AEOI, but offshore currency holdings – which are an important asset class for wealthy Argentinians – are also poorly reported.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whilst international cooperation is important, it is not the only barrier that needs to be overcome to tax the wealthy. Argentina presents a case study in how a progressive tax system can unravel in the face of high and volatile inflation, and how large swings in the tax rate due to political polarisation can limit the effectiveness of tax policy. This case study will be important for other developing and developed countries which are also often experiencing the high levels of inflation and political polarisation that Argentina has struggled with for decades.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Argentina is one of the few countries to already have a comprehensive wealth tax as advocated for by Zucman.1 The wealth tax is intended to be highly progressive, but high and volatile inflation, ranging from 20 to 40 per cent in the last 15 years, has at times brought many more people into the purview of the tax than initially intended. Figure 1 shows that the threshold to start paying wealth tax fell from 15 times GDP per capita in 2007 to 2 times GDP per capita in 2015, leading to the share of wealth tax payers increasing from 0.5 per cent to 1.9 per cent of the total population. Between 2016 and 2020, the wealth tax threshold was periodically updated, and from 2021 it was indexed to the consumer price index (CPI). This has not entirely fixed the problem, as official estimates of property values, which are a major component of the wealth tax base, are not regularly updated in Argentina. As property price growth tends to be higher than the CPI rate of inflation, a lack of revaluation means that the wealth tax falls on an ever-decreasing share of true wealth.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The story is similar for personal income taxation. As Figure 2 shows, the fraction of employees who were liable for the personal income tax grew from 10 per cent to 30 per cent in just four years between 2009 and 2013, as the tax-free allowance was fixed in nominal terms despite inflation of 20–40 per cent. This was corrected in 2014, and from 2016 the personal allowance threshold was indexed to nominal wages. However, indexation failed to stop the rise in the share of employees paying personal income ","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"247-249"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12344","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50129372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Symposium: tax equity around the world – introduction","authors":"James Banks,&nbsp;Anne Brockmeyer","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12343","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;As inequality has risen around the world, the importance of tax design for achieving equity objectives has become increasingly widely discussed and is the focus of much recent public finance research. At the same time, globalisation and the increasing international mobility of capital have brought international and jurisdictional issues in tax policy to the fore for many countries and for the international community more generally.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This set of issues was showcased at the 4&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; World Bank Tax Conference in September 2022, which focused on ‘Global Tax Equity’. The meeting was hosted by the World Bank and organised jointly by the World Bank, the Overseas Development Institute, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and UK Aid, and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.1&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The conference brought together leading researchers and policymakers to discuss the role of fiscal policy in dealing with the challenge of global inequality, both within countries and internationally, and how new data sources and research might inform such a debate. It featured discussions of recent research on making tax systems more equitable at a global scale, including the taxation of high-net-worth individuals, including wealth taxation; tax transparency, beneficial ownership, offshoring and tax havens; and taxes on multinationals and large corporations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The set of perspectives papers in this symposium showcases some of the key policy questions and discussions from that meeting of academic researchers, tax and development practitioners and policymakers. In the paper entitled ‘Globalisation, taxation and inequality’, Gabriel Zucman summarises the arguments he presented in his keynote address to that conference. He discusses the way current tax systems heavily favour capital and capital income at the expense of labour, and argues this is not appropriate for our times. Whilst he welcomes some recent changes such as the advent of the global minimum tax, he also makes a number of further suggestions and recommendations for the future direction of national and international tax policy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Three further short perspectives pieces then present brief commentaries and reactions to the points and issues raised by Zucman, predominantly from the perspective of tax policy in developing economies. The first is by Anne Brockmeyer and David Phillips who was the organiser of the policy session on global tax equity at the World Bank conference in which senior tax officials from Honduras, Indonesia and Argentina discussed specific issues with improving tax equity in their national contexts. Brockmeyer and Phillips discuss the specific proposals in the Zucman paper and suggest areas where more research is needed in order to establish the likely success or otherwise of such policies. They also pick up briefly on one of the points made by the Honduran tax officials in that policy session, since Honduras has sought to ra","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"225-227"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12343","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50129373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Taxing high-net-worth individuals: experience from Indonesia","authors":"Vedanth Nair,&nbsp;Mekar Satria Utama","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12345","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-5890.12345","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;With high levels of inequality and a rising share of capital income in total income, as Gabriel Zucman's piece in this symposium pithily highlights, there are several reasons why tax authorities in developing countries should place a special focus on high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs). First, progressive tax system structures, combined with high levels of income concentration, mean that even a small increase in tax avoidance and evasion amongst the ultra-wealthy can lead to a substantial drop in overall tax revenue. Second, HNWIs tend to have highly complex tax arrangements, income and wealth scattered across the world, and access to tax planning experts, which facilitates tax avoidance and tax evasion. Research from Scandinavia1 and the US2 has found that, on a cost-weighted basis, tax evasion is concentrated at the top of the distribution. Finally, the integrity of the tax system as a whole is contingent on taxpayers believing that the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share in tax. Survey evidence3 has found that taxpayers at the bottom and middle of the distribution are more willing to pay tax when they are informed that the tax system is progressive, and less willing to pay tax when they are informed that the tax system is not progressive. Low- and middle-income countries have especially struggled in raising revenue from the rich, due to high levels of informality, high levels of self-employment amongst top earners, and low tax rates on capital gains and wealth transfers.4&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the case for focusing on HNWIs is clear, the steps governments should take to do so are not, especially for low- and middle-income countries with more limited financial and technical resources. In his article in this symposium, Zucman argues for improved international cooperation, multilateral tax agreements, and potentially new forms of taxation, such as wealth taxes or stock market capitalisation taxes, to increase tax collection from HNWIs. Even if these reforms are desirable (see the article by Anne Brockmeyer and David Phillips in this symposium), they would take years or even decades to be fully achieved. Indonesia's recent experience in taxing HNWIs provides some direct case-study evidence on what low- and middle-income countries can potentially achieve in the short term.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Indonesia, the initial challenge was to define what an HNWI is. International organisations typically define HNWIs as having net asset values ranging from USD 1 million to USD 30 million. Indonesia adopted its own definition, of IDR 10 billion (USD 664,000), to be in line with other tax thresholds in its domestic tax system. In addition, individuals are also classified as HNWIs if they have an income greater than IDR 1 billion (USD 66,000) per year, are a shareholder/owner of a business group, or are noted as having high net worth in national or international media such as Forbes or Globe Asia. Despite representing 0.35 per cent of Indonesia's population of registered taxpayers, HN","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"243-245"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12345","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48238504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Globalisation, taxation and inequality","authors":"Gabriel Zucman","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12341","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-5890.12341","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Today's tax systems, in which value-added taxes and payroll taxes play a prominent role, are largely creations of the 1950s. We need to invent modern tax systems adapted to the reality of the 21^st century: the growing importance of capital and the rise of inequality. This article reviews some of the challenges involved with increasing the progressivity of tax systems in a globalised world and discusses how these challenges could be overcome. I make the case for new and more ambitious forms of international cooperation and for modern forms of wealth taxation.</p>","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"229-235"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46351892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Behavioural normative economics: foundations, approaches and trends","authors":"Malte Dold","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12340","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-5890.12340","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article summarises the theoretical foundations, main approaches and current trends in the field of behavioural normative economics. It identifies <i>bounded rationality</i> and <i>bounded willpower</i> as the two core concepts that have motivated the field. Since the concepts allow for individual preferences to be context-dependent and time-inconsistent, they pose an intricate problem for standard welfare analysis. The article discusses the ways in which two prominent approaches – the preference purification approach and the opportunity approach – have tackled the problem. It argues that shortcomings in each of these approaches motivate an agency-centric perspective. The article presents two concrete policy proposals of the agency-centric approach. While this approach is promising, the article argues for pluralism in normative economics since an exclusive focus on agency can likely not do justice to the multifarious concerns that citizens hold.</p>","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 2","pages":"137-150"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12340","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46207675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Moral economics","authors":"Samuel Bowles","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12335","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-5890.12335","url":null,"abstract":"<p>An adequate normative economics – one that is consistent with recent developments in our discipline (and in philosophy and psychology) and that resonates with widely held moral intuitions – will have to address the following challenges. First, utility cannot be both the basis of our predictions of economic behaviour and the evaluation of the outcomes of this behaviour. Second, we need to conceive of individual well-being and other desiderata in ways that are interpersonally comparable and that go beyond efficiency and fairness. Third, the representation of the economy as a ‘morality-free zone’ (requiring that contracts, including employment contracts, are complete) must give way to a recognition of the unaccountable exercise of power by private actors, even in a perfectly competitive equilibrium, and the way that this may violate democratic principles and limit the freedom and compromise the dignity of other actors. Fourth, the commitment to ‘liberal neutrality’ (thereby sidestepping the evaluation of preferences) and the related assumption of ‘unrestricted preferences’ in mechanism design and public policy must be abandoned, making room for a concern about the nature of our preferences and the ways that institutions shape our values.</p>","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 2","pages":"151-160"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12335","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47079614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Money matters: consumption variability across the income distribution","authors":"Jonathan Fisher,&nbsp;Bradley L. Hardy","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12339","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we document the level and variability of quarterly consumption across the socio-economic distribution. While the measurement of well-being is focused on income, the secular and policy discourse prioritises income-adequacy to meet family needs. This concern over income-adequacy centres on the capacity of families to predictably consume minimally acceptable levels of basic needs, and the social and economic mobility consequences of low consumption. Our results show a clear socio-economic and demographic gradient of lower consumption amid higher consumption variability for disadvantaged groups. Food, entertainment, and personal care goods and services exhibit relatively high levels of consumption variability among low-income households.</p>","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 3","pages":"275-298"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50154808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is it time to reboot welfare economics? Overview","authors":"Diane Coyle,&nbsp;Mark Fabian,&nbsp;Eric Beinhocker,&nbsp;Tim Besley,&nbsp;Margaret Stevens","doi":"10.1111/1475-5890.12334","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-5890.12334","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The contributions of economists have long included both positive explanations of how economic systems work and normative recommendations for how they could and should work better. In recent decades, economics has taken a strong empirical turn as well as having a greater appreciation of the importance of the complexities of real-world human behaviour, institutions, the strengths and failures of markets, and interlinkages with other systems, including politics, technology, culture and the environment. This shift has also brought greater relevance and pragmatism to normative economics. While this shift towards evidence and pragmatism has been welcome, it does not in itself answer the core question of what exactly constitutes ‘better’, and for whom, and how to manage inevitable conflicts and trade-offs in society. These have long been the core concerns of welfare economics. Yet, in the 1980s and 1990s, debates on welfare economics seemed to have become marginalised. The articles in this <i>Fiscal Studies</i> symposium engage with the question of how to revive normative questions as a central issue in economic scholarship.</p>","PeriodicalId":51602,"journal":{"name":"Fiscal Studies","volume":"44 2","pages":"109-121"},"PeriodicalIF":7.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-5890.12334","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42309510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}