理论与实践中的税收分配分析: 哈伯格遇见戴蒙德-米尔利斯
Distributional Tax Analysis in Theory and Practice: Harberger Meets Diamond-Mirrlees
Journal of Public Economics · 2023 · [{"name": "Emmanuel Saez", "affiliation": ["University of California, Berkeley"]}, {"name": "Gabriel Zucman", "affiliation": ["University of California, Berkeley"]}]
中文摘要
本文提出一个研究当前税收分布及税制改革效应的新框架。对于当前税收，劳动税分配给相应劳动者，资本税分配给相应资产所有者，消费税分配给相应消费者。当前税收刻画了税前价格（与生产相关）与税后价格（与家庭的工作、储蓄和消费决策相关）之间的楔子，以及税收的直接公平效应，但不涉及效率问题。我们的方法不需要结构性假设，具有内在一致性，并最大化了税收累进性和不平等程度在跨时间、跨国家维度上的可比性。将该方法应用于美国，我们发现，前1%人群的有效税率已从20世纪50年代初约50%下降到2021年的32%。20世纪中期正是通过企业税实现了高度的税收累进性。为分析税制改革的分配效应，在Diamond和Mirrlees（1971）的新古典最优税收模型中，按收入群体划分的纳税义务的机械性变化，以及由家庭（而非企业）行为反应引起的总收入效应，是充分统计量。税收对税前价格的影响虽是经典税负归宿分析的核心，但在规范意义上是无关的。
Abstract
This paper proposes a new framework to study the distribution of current taxes and the effects of tax reforms. For current taxes, labor taxes are assigned to the corresponding workers, capital taxes to the corresponding asset owners, and consumption taxes to the corresponding consumers. Current taxes capture the wedges between pre-tax prices (relevant for production) and after-tax prices (relevant for the work, saving, and consumption decisions of households) as well as the direct equity effects of taxes while being silent about efficiency. Our method does not require structural assumptions, is internally consistent, and maximizes the comparability of tax progressivity and inequality over time and across countries. Applying this methodology to the United States, we find that the effective tax rate of the top 1% has declined from about 50% in the early 1950s to 32% in 2021. It is through the corporate tax that a high degree of tax progressivity was achieved in the middle of the 20 th century. To analyze the distributional effects of tax reforms, mechanical changes in tax liability by income groups and aggregate revenue effects due to household (but not firms’) behavioral responses are sufficient statistics in the neoclassical optimal tax model of Diamond and Mirrlees (1971). The effects of taxes on pre-tax prices at the heart of classical tax incidence analysis are normatively irrelevant.