中文摘要
税收对年轻企业的成本有多高?本文证明,即便是很小的工资税也会显著扭曲企业的雇佣决策与就业增长。首先,我们利用新雇主所面临税收的横截面差异,研究这些税收如何影响创业者成为雇主的决定。我们发现,更高的税收会阻碍新企业雇用其首批员工;我们估计新雇主数量对税收的弹性为-0.1。其次,我们研究新雇主进入后所面临的税收变动。我们发现,更高的税收导致更多企业退出,同时也降低了存活企业的就业,并促使部分企业通过使用不征税的合同工来避税。
Abstract
How costly are taxes for young firms? In this paper, we demonstrate that even small payroll taxes significantly distort hiring decisions and employment growth. First, we leverage cross-sectional variation in the taxes faced by new employers to study how these taxes affect entrepreneurs’ decisions to become employers. We find that higher taxes discourage new firms from hiring their first workers; we estimate an elasticity of the number of new employers to taxes of −0.1. Second, we study tax changes a new employer faces after it enters. We find that higher taxes lead more firms to exit, while also reducing employment for those who survive and leading some firms to avoid taxes by using non-taxable contract labor.