美国的增值税 一种解决方案外文翻译.docx

1、美国的增值税 一种解决方案外文翻译本科毕业论文（设计）外 文 翻 译外文出处 Brookings Institution and Tax Policy Center 外文作者 William G. Gale，Benjamin H. Harris 原文：A Value-Added Tax for the United States: Part of the SolutionAdministrative Issues A broad-based VAT would cost less to administer than the current income tax. For example, i

2、n the United Kingdom, administrative costs of the VAT were less than half of those of the income tax, measured as a share of revenue. Similarly, the New Zealand revenue department was required to intervene in just 3 percent of VAT returns, compared to 25 percent of income tax returns (GAO 2008). The

3、 VAT has compliance advantages over a retail sales tax, which aims to collect all revenue at the point of sale from a business to a household. Since revenue collection for the VAT is spread across stages of production, with producers receiving a credit against taxes paid as an incentive for complian

4、ce, the VAT in practice is less likely to be evaded.Theory and evidence suggest that the compliance burden would likely fall more heavily as a percentage of sales on smaller businesses. Most countries address these concerns by exempting small businesses from collecting the VAT. In 2007, 24 out of th

5、e 29 OECD countries with a VAT exempted businesses with gross receipts beneath specified thresholds, varying from $2,159 to $93,558 (OECD 2008). Finally, it is worth noting that, to the extent that administrative costs are fixed with respect to the VAT standard rate, the presence of such costs sugge

6、st that the VAT should be set at a relatively higher rate rather than a lower one.The States Some analysts express concern that a national VAT would impinge on states ability to administer their own sales taxes. In our view, a national VAT could help states significantly. State retail sales taxes ar

7、e poorly designed they exempt many goods and most services and collect more than 40 percent of their revenue from taxing business purchases, which should be exempt.Converting their sales taxes to VATs and piggybacking on a broad-based federal VAT would offer states several advantages. First, the sta

8、tes could raise substantial amounts of revenue in a less distortionary manner than current sales taxes. Second, administrative costs, which currently exceed 3 percent of state sales tax revenue (PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2006), would decline. Many states currently link their income tax to the federal i

9、ncome tax base, with obvious administrative and compliance advantages. Similar savings would accrue from linking federal and state VAT bases. Third, a national VAT would allow states and the federal government to tax previously difficult-to-tax transactions, such as interstate mail order and interne

10、t sales. If the U.S. experience followed that of Canada, the federal government could collect revenue on behalf of states and absolve states of the cost of administering consumption taxes altogether (Duncan and Sedon 2010). In 2009, state and local sales tax revenue equaled 2.0 percent of GDP (autho

11、rs calculations based on U.S. Census Bureau 2010). If the federal VAT had the broad base and demogrants described in Table 1, and the states and localities piggy-backed on that structure, an average subnational VAT of about 6 percent would raise the same revenue as existing state and local sales tax

12、es.Alternatively, states could maintain their sales taxes or create their own VAT bases. Following the implementation of a federal VAT in Canada, most provinces maintained their existing tax codes for several years. Some provinces have yet to fully harmonize with the federal VAT, while Quebec admini

13、sters its own VAT (Duncan and Sedon 2010).Anticipated VAT as Stimulus While a major tax increase would not be a good idea while the economy is still recovering slowly from recession, it is worth noting that there is potential for the announcement of a future VAT to be stimulative in the current peri

14、od. By raising the price of consumption goods in the future, or by doing so gradually over time via a phased-in VAT, the announcement would encourage people to spend more now and in the near future, when the economy needs the stimulus. This effect may not be very big there is little evidence but it

15、goes in the right direction. Will the VAT fuel expanding government? The VAT has been called a money machine in honor of its ability to raise substantial amounts of revenue. That is a helpful feature if the revenues are used to close deficits, but poses a problem if the boost in revenue simply fuels

16、 further unsustainable growth in federal spending.Some analysts reject any source of extra revenue including a VAT on the grounds that less government revenue leads to smaller government. In general, this “starve the beast” theory does not apply to most taxes, nor does it reflect recent experience.

17、Romer and Romer (2009), for example, find that tax cuts designed to spur long-run growth do not in fact lead to lower government spending; if anything, they find that tax cuts lead to higher spending. This finding is consistent with Gale and Orszag (2004b), who argue that the experience of the last

18、30 years is more consistent with a coordinated fiscal discipline view, in which tax cuts were coupled with increased spending (as in the 1980s and 2000s) and tax increases were coupled with contemporaneous spending reductions (as in the 1990s). Given the widely recognized need for both spending cuts

19、 and revenue increases to balance the budget, it is likely that any new revenue stream would be accompanied by reductions in spending. Some observers argue that the VAT is such an efficient and invisible tax that it has been and would be used to fuel government spending increases through a gradually

20、 increasing VAT rate. Bartlett (2010a, 2010b) addresses this claim by noting that increased VAT rates in OECD countries were common among early adopters, who operated a VAT in the high-inflation environments in the 1970s, but far less common among countries that adopted a VAT after 1975. Among the 1

21、7 countries that instituted a VAT during the post-1975 period of relative price stability, four have not changed their VAT rate and four have decreased the rate; the average rate increase across all late-adopters of the VAT is less than 1 percentage point. The average VAT in OECD countries has been

22、roughly constant since 1984 at or just below 18 percent. Making the VAT transparent A variant of the concern about spending growth is the notion that the VAT is hidden in overall prices. As a result, the argument goes, taxpayers wont notice the VAT the way they do income, sales, or payroll taxes, en

23、abling Congress to increase the VAT rate without much taxpayer resistance. This issue is easily addressed. The VAT doesnt have to be invisible: for example, Canada simply requires that businesses print the amount of VAT paid on a receipt with every consumer purchase. This is essentially identical to

24、 the standard U.S. practice of printing sales taxes paid on each receipt.Another way to make the VAT transparent is to link VAT rates and revenues with spending on particular goods. Aaron (1991) and Burman (2009) propose a VAT related to health spending. Under such a system, the additional health in

25、surance coverage would help offset the regressivity of a VAT and make the costs of both the VAT and government spending more transparent. Inflation The creation of an add-on VAT will create pressure on prices. (If, instead, the VAT were replacing a sales tax, there would be no pressure or need to ad

26、just the price level.) In our view, the Fed should accommodate the one-time price rise inherent in the creation of an add-on VAT. Not doing so would create significant and unnecessary adjustment costs in terms of lost jobs and wages. But there is no theoretical or empirical reason to expect that the

27、 VAT would cause continuing inflation. Indeed, the presence of an additional revenue source would reduce the likelihood of the Fed having to monetize the debt. Research has found only a weak relationship between the VAT and continually increasing prices. In a survey of 35 countries that introduced t

28、he VAT, Tait (1991) finds that 63 percent exhibited no increase in the consumer price index (perhaps because they were replacing existing sales taxes) and 20 percent had a one-time price rise. In the remaining 17 percent of cases, the introduction of the VAT coincided with ongoing acceleration in co

29、nsumer prices, but it is not likely in Taits view that the VAT caused the acceleration. The Canadian VATIn 1991, Canada implemented a 7 percent VAT at the national level to replace a tax on sales by manufacturers. Many of the concerns associated with the VAT in the United States can be assuaged by o

30、bserving the Canadian experience.Canada addressed distributional concerns by applying a zero rate to certain necessities and adding a refundable tax credit in the income tax. As noted above, we prefer the latter method. The Canadian VAT is completely transparent: it is listed separately on receipts

31、just like sales taxes in the U.S. Perhaps because of the transparency, the VAT has not led to significant growth of government spending. Federal spending in Canada has in fact gradually declined from 22.6 percent of GDP in 1991when the VAT was implementedto 14.9 percent in 2009. The standard VAT rat

32、e has declined over time to 6 percent in 2006 and 5 percent in 2008. Federal tax revenue in Canada has fallen from 17.6 percent of GDP in 1991 to 16.3 percent of GDP in 2007 (and fell further to 14.6 percent during the 2009 recession). In terms of both revenues and expenditures, the size of the Canadian federal government has shrunk significantly since the introduction of the VAT. Since 1991, Canadian inflation and economic growth rates have been similar to those in the United States. Coordinating provincial sales taxes with the VAT has proven to be challenging, but manageable. After the VAT