Does Taxing Business Owners Affect Employees? Evidence From A Change in the Top Marginal Tax Rate
中文摘要
关于企业所有者税收的争论往往聚焦于此类税收的分配效应，尤其是其对劳动者的影响程度。本文利用美国行政税务记录构建的一个新的“所有者—企业—劳动者”关联数据集，分析企业所有者面临的最高边际税率上升如何影响其雇员的收入。研究采用面板双重差分方法，比较相似企业中所有者受加税影响程度不同的劳动者的收入变化。估计结果显示，每新增1美元企业所得税负，其中有11至18美分转嫁至雇员收入。就业水平并未因加税而发生统计显著变化。这些反应总体表现为收入增长放缓，而非劳动力构成的变化。税负并非由所有劳动者平均承担：劳动者所承担的负担几乎全部由收入分布中位居前30%的劳动者承担，这凸显出该政策的最终分配效应不仅取决于劳动者承担的负担份额，还取决于不同类型劳动者各自承担的份额。此外，由于所有者承担了大部分负担，该政策降低了适用最高税率档的所有者与适用较低税率档的劳动者之间的税后收入不平等。文章最后讨论了这些发现对发挥中介作用的劳动力市场机制的含义，以及基于公共资金边际价值框架对所得税福利分析的启示。
Abstract
Abstract Debates about the taxation of business owners often center on the distributional effects of these taxes, particularly the degree to which they affect workers. Drawing on a new linked owner-firm-worker data set created from U.S. administrative tax records, I analyze how an increase in the top marginal tax rate faced by business owners affected the earnings of their employees. I use panel difference-in-differences methods to compare the earnings of workers in similar firms but whose owners were differentially exposed to the tax increase. I estimate that 11–18 cents per dollar of new business income tax liability was passed through to employee earnings. I find no change in employment in response to the tax increase. The responses were generally associated with lower earnings growth, not changes in workforce composition. The burden was not borne equally by all workers. Essentially all of the workers’ share of the burden was borne by those in the top 30% of the earnings distribution, highlighting that the ultimate distributional effects of the policy depend not only on the share of the burden borne by workers but on the shares borne by different types of workers. Furthermore, since the owners bore the majority of the burden, the policy resulted in a decrease in after-tax earnings inequality between top-bracket owners and lower-bracket workers. I discuss the implications of the findings for the mediating labor market mechanisms and for welfare analyses of income taxation using a marginal value of public funds framework.