财务管理外文翻译.docx

毕业论文外文翻译外文来源 Cato Handbook for Policymakers Author :David Boaz 中文译文 卡托政策制定者手册：戴维波阿斯 部 （系） 商 学 部 专 业 姓 名 学 号 200901200146 指导老师 2013年 3 月 15 日英文原文Cato handbook for policymakers author: David BoazCorporate tax reformsDavid BoazCato institute7thEdition2009Corporate Tax ReformsA key issue for tax policy in the global economy is how to deal with multinational corporations. Corporate taxation is important to investors, but also to the living standards of average Americans. In a globalized economy, the burden of the corporate income tax falls mainly on workers in the form of lower wages. If corporations are not investing in the UnitedStates due to high taxes, labor productivity will fall, and that will drag down American wages. Compared with foreign-based corporations, U.S. multinational corporations are subject to particularly high tax rates and complicated tax rules. The United States taxes corporations on their worldwide income, even though that income may also be subject to taxes in the foreign nations where it is earned. The U.S. tax code provides credits to minimize double taxation, but this is a complex and uncompetitive method of business taxation. The worldwide system discourages the repatriation of foreign earnings, and it puts U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in foreign markets. By contrast, two-thirds of major nations tax corporations on a territorial basis, which means that they generally do not tax business income earned outside their national borders.There would be two key advantages of the United States switching from a worldwide to a territorial system of business taxation. First, it would end the current tax barrier to the repatriation of foreign earnings. Currently, repatriated foreign earnings are subject to the 35 percent federal corporate tax, which suppresses profit repatriation and thus investment in the United States. Under a territorial system, business profits earned abroad would be repatriated free of a U.S. tax burden. Second, it would help make the United States a good home for the headquarters of multinational corporations. Currently, a high tax rate and the worldwide tax system make the United States a poor choice for locating corporate headquarters. If the United States switched to a territorial system, companies could earn profits abroad without a U.S. tax burden placed on top of the foreign taxes paid. That would make it easier for firms to expand their foreign sales, which in turn would lead to expansion in firms U.S. headquarters activities, such as management, finance, and research. Reducing the U.S. corporate tax rate is also a crucial reform because of the mobile nature of the corporate tax base in the globalized economy. Because of the high U.S. tax rate, companies put large efforts into moving their investments and reported profits abroad to low-tax nations, such as Ireland. Americas high corporate tax rate is a loser for the U.S. economy, and it is also a loser for the government because it causes the tax base to shrink dramatically. Recent experience shows that governments lose little, if any, revenue when they cut their corporate tax rates. Corporate tax cuts create strong dynamic responses that offset reductions in revenues. In our book Global Tax Revolution, we calculated the average corporate tax rate and average corporate tax revenues as a share of gross domestic product for 19 industrial nations. The average corporate tax rate across countries was 40 percent or more until the mid-1980s. But then tax rates plunged, with the average rate falling from 45 percent in 1985 to 29 percent by 2005. Interestingly, corporate tax revenues did not decline as rates fell. In fact, tax revenues soared from 2.6 percent of GDP in 1985 to 3.7 percent in 2005, which is a 42 percent increase. Corporate tax revenues have surged in most countries that have cut tax rates. Lower rates generate more real investment and higher incomes in subsequent years. In addition, tax rate cuts result in increases in reported profits as companies reduce their tax avoidance and tax evasion activities. The bottom line is that a corporate tax rate cut is a winner for the economy, for workers, and potentially for the government as well as the tax base expands over time.Backlash against Tax Competition The global tax revolution is a supply-side revolution. Supply-side tax cuts are those that reduce the costs of productive activities, such as working, investing, and starting businesses. If the costs of production are reduced, output will increase and incomes will rise. Tax competition creates pressure to cut precisely those taxes that are the most damaging to the economy. More tax competition means more productive economies and higher living standards. Alas, many politicians and pundits do not see it that way. They claim that tax competition causes distortions in the private sector. The idea is that if investment flows are driven in any way by taxation, it is inefficient for the world economy. Ireland is receiving too much investment because of its low business taxes, for example. Others argue that tax competition creates distortions in the public sector. Any reduction in government revenue that results from capital and labor emigrating to lower-tax nations is supposed to be an inefficient fiscal externality. Government revenues will fall below the supposed optimal size as a race to the bottom in tax levels ensues. There are many theoretical flaws in those arguments. For one thing, they are premised on the public interest theory of government, the idea that government officials always act for the general welfare of citizens. But it is naive to assume that if policymakers had monopoly fiscal power without tax competition, they would set tax rates at the optimal level for the good of the people. Another mistake of tax competition opponents is to think of tax competition as a zero-sum game. In fact, tax competition drives down tax rates on the most inefficient types of taxes, and thus helps to expand the global economic pie. All nations that enact supply-side tax reforms can generate greater economic growth. Countries are not competing to divide a fixed pie, but to create the least burdensome government and the most prosperity for citizens. On a practical level, there has not been a race to the bottom in tax revenues around the world, as the critics fear. Fiscal conservatives might wish that there had been, but tax competition has not yet starved the beast of bloated government. But looking ahead, tax competition will impose a valuable barrier against government growth. In coming decades, the rising costs of retirement and health programs for the elderly in the United States and elsewhere will generate large pressures to increase taxes.Vigorous tax competition will be a crucial tool to preserve limited government in the 21st century. Supporters of big government know that expansive welfare states are in jeopardy from tax competition, which is why they are trying to limit it. Their strategy is for governments to impose international agreements to equalize taxes and to share information about each others taxpayers. Efforts are under way through the European Commission, the United Nations, and the OECD to control tax competition and eliminate downward pressures on tax rates. There are also proposals to create a permanent world tax organization, which would help enforce limits to competition. Such efforts to restrict tax competition are bad economics, and they also raise privacy and human rights concerns. A goal of tax competition opponents is the adoption of extensive sharing of personal financial information between countries. But governments have a very poor record on keeping personal data private. In one recent British scandal, for example, a low-level tax official lost two computer disks containing the detailed tax, financial, and banking records of 25 million individuals. When less savory governments are involved, the issues can be even more serious. The security of many people will be at risk if governments create a global network of tax police to collect and swap personal financial information. Tax haven jurisdictions, which have strong privacy laws, are being pressured by groups such as the OECD to make sweeping policy changes to dilute their high standards. But privacy rights are a crucial freedom in the digital age. Tax havens are specialists in privacy; they generally have very high governance standards, and most are economic success stories. It makes no sense for the OECD and other international organizations to run roughshod over their ability to set their own pro-market economic policies.To defend tax competition, U.S. policymakers should do the following: Use American influence to stop the OECDs anti-tax competition project; Reject European Union invitations to participate in cartel-like tax initiatives, such as the savings tax directive; Block possible schemes of the United Nations to create global taxes, global tax standards, or a global tax organization; Oppose efforts to change U.S. policies to reduce tax competition, such as imposing new requirements for the reporting of interest paid to nonresidents; Reject the various efforts of U.S. policymakers to blacklist low tax nations.EmpiricalstudiesoftheincidenceofthecorporateincometaxSeveralrecentempiricalstudieshaveestimatedtheeffectofthecorporateincometaxonwagesusingcross-countrydata.Arulampalam,Devereux,andMafni(2012)considerthepossibilitythatcorporationsshiftincometaxestoworkersthroughthewagebargainingprocess.Theymeasuretheeffectofcorporateincometaxespaidbyrms(asopposedtocorporatetaxrates)onemployeecompensationusingdataonmorethan500,000rmsinnineEuropeancountriesovertheperiod19962003.Conditionalonvalue-addedperemployee,a$1increaseinthetaxbilltendstoreducethemedianrealwageby$0.49.ArelatedstudybyFelixandHines(2009)usingdatafromtheyear2000evaluatestheeffectofU.S.statecorporateincometaxesonunionwagesandndsthata10percentlowerstatetaxrateisassociatedwitha3.6percenthigherunionwagepremium.Theirresultssuggestthatunionworkersseea$0.54decreaseinwagesforevery$1increaseinthecorporatetaxbill.Itisimportanttonotethatthesestudiesdonotmeasuregeneralequilibriumeffectsofthecorporatetaxonwagesbutrathertheimpactofthetaxontheoutcomeofworkerandfirmbargainingovereconomicrents.Aseriesofstudieshaveattemptedtoprovidedirectevidenceofthegeneralequilibriumeffectofthecorporateincometaxonwagesusingcross-countrydata.Usingaggregatewageandtaxdatawithinthemanufacturingsectorfor72countriesfrom19812002,HasseltandMathur(2010)findthatwagesarehighlyresponsivetochangesinthecorporatetaxrate.Theestimatedelasticityofwageswithrespecttocorporateincometaxratesrangesfrom0.40.6acrossdifferentspecications,indicatingthata$1.00increaseintaxrevenueleadstoa$300to$4.00decreaseintherealwage.AsGranvilleandHungerford(2008)pointout,thelargemagnitudeandsignificanceofthiselasticityissensitivetotheuseofalternativeexchangeratesandtimeintervals.Inaddition,byincludingameasureofvalue-addedperworkerasacontrolvariable,theidentifedtaxcoefficientfailstocapturetheeffectsofthecorporatetaxonwagesthroughchangesinvalue-added(Arulampalam,Devereux,andMafni,2012).Felix(2007)usesaggregatedataonwagesofworkersatdifferentskilllevelsfrom19OECDcountriesovertheperiod19792000andestimatesthata1percentagepointincreaseinthetopstatutorycorporatetaxratedecreasesannualwagesby0.7percent.Shendsnodifferenceintheextenttowhichthetaxisshiftedtolaboratdifferentskilllevels.Desai,Foley,andHines(2007)usedatafromU.S.multinationalrmsoperatingin50countriesfrom19892004tojointlyestimatetherelativeshareofthecorporatetaxbornebylaborandcapital.Constrainingtheportionofthetotaltaxburdenbornebycapitalandlabortogethertobeone,theyndthatlaborbearsbetween45to75percentoftheincidenceofthecorporateincometax.Whilesomehavecritiquedtheseempiricalstudies(Clausing,2013;GravelleandHungerford,2008),thisgrowingbodyofempiricalworkprovidessuggestiveevidencethatlaborbearsalargeburdenofthecorporatetax.However,asdiscussedintheintroduction,muchofthisworkuseseithercross-countryorcross-statedatawithoutcorrectingClausing(2013),GravelleandHungerford(2008),Gentry(2007),andHarris(2009)providecriticalreviewsofempiricalstudiesofcorporatetaxincidence.CorporateIncomeTaxBurdenUnderImperfectCompetition219forthepossibleendogeneityofcorporatetaxratesduetotaxcompetition.Inadditiontheexistingliteratureimplicitlyassumesthatallrmsoperateinperfectlycompetitivemarkets.Weconsiderimperfectcompetitioninthenextsectionandestimatetheimpactofcorporatetaxesonwagesinasettinginwhichchangesintaxratesinothercountriesshouldhavenoimpactonourestimatedcoefcients.11卡托政策制定者作者手册：戴维波阿斯企业所得税改革戴维波阿斯卡托研究所2009年第七版一、企业所得税的改革税收政策在全球经济中的一个关键问题是如何处理跨国公司。企业的税收是重要的投资者，但是也是美国人平均生活水平的体现。在世界经济全球化中，企业所得税的负担主要落在低工资工人身上。由于美国是高税收国家，劳动生产率会下降，而且会拖累美国人的平均工资水平所以很多人没有在本土进行投资。与外国公司相比，美国的跨国公司有更高的税率和复杂的税务规则。美国的企业所得税是其全部的经济收入，甚至这些收入也可能是须缴纳的国外收入。美国税法提供信贷减少双轴线，但这是一个复杂的但没有竞争性税收业务的方法。全球系统阻碍遣返外国盈利，它使美国企业在国外市场上处于不利的地位。与此相反，在主要国家税务公司三分之二的领土的基础上，这意味着，在本国边界以外他们一般不赚取企业所得税的收入。从全球到区域的营业税制度来讲有两个主要优点。首先，它将结束目前遣返外国盈利障碍，国外遣返的盈利收入达到美国联邦企业所得税收入的35，因此在美国抑制利润遣返和投资领土的制度下，企业在国外赚取的利润将由被遣返的美国税务负担。其次，这将有助于美国跨国公司总部建立一个良好的环境。目前，高税率和全球税收制度使美国公司总部的选择变得很糟糕。如果美国转换到一个地域系统，公司可以将在国外赚取利润放在没有美国的税务负担的外国上缴税金中。这将使它更容易为企业扩大对外销售，反过来会促使企业扩张美国总部的活动，如管理，金融和研究。降低美国的企业所得税率也是改革的一个关键要素，在经济全球化中企业的税基具有流动性。由于美国的高税率，公司在国外税率较低的国家进行了大量的投资，如爱尔兰。美国的高企业所得税税率是美国经济中的一个败笔，它也是美国政府宏观调控失败的体现，因为它会导致税基大幅缩水。最近的研究表明，政府没有受到损失，如果收入减少的话，他们会降低企业所得税税率，建立一个完善的企业减税动态响应体系从而减少收入的流失。在我们全球税收制度改革中，我们统计了19个工业国家平均企业所得税率和平均企业所得税收入占国内生产总值（GDP）的比重。调查显示直到20世纪80年代中期所有国家的平均企业税率为40甚至更高。但随后税率暴跌，平均率从1985年的45，下降到2005年的29%。有趣的是，企业所得税收入却没有因为利率的下降而降低。事实上，税收收入从在1985年占国内生产总值的2.6上升至2005年的3.7%，增长了近42。在大多数降低税率的国家企业所得税收入已在飙升。在之后的几年里较低的利率能吸引更多的投资从而增加收入。此外，削减税率导致虚报利润报表为避免公司的利润减少从而进行逃税活动。但底线是，企业税率下调随着时间的推移必须对经济是有利的，对工人，和政府的调控是有利的。二、反对税收竞争全球税制改革是企业的革命。如工作，投资和创业，企业裁员是降低成本的一种途径。如果生产成本降低，那么产量将会增加并且收入将会上升。税收竞争会产生压力，而削减税收对经济是最具破坏性的。更多的税收竞争意味着更多的生产性经济和提高人民生活水平。但是，很多政治家和学者不这样看。他们声称税收竞争会导致私营部门的扭曲。我们的想法是，如果可以有任何方式能带动税收，那么流动性投资对世界经济来说却是“低效的。例如爱尔兰，由于其过低的所得税税率，致使爱尔兰接受过多的投资。其他人则认为税收竞争扭曲了公共部门。任何政府财政收入的减少从而导致该国资本和劳动向低税率的国家流动表明该政府是一个低效的政府。随之而来是政府收入将低于所谓的最优规模“比赛”税的水平。但是这些参数很多都是具有理论缺陷的。对于某一件事，政府官员总是充当公民一般福利的代表，但前提是这个政府必须是“公共利益理论的政府”。但这是个很天真的假设，如果政策制定者具有垄断财政的权力他们将会设定税率，将税率定在他们认为对人们最有利的水平上，而不是实行竞争性税务。另一个错误是税收竞争的参与者认为税收竞争是一个零和游戏。而事实上，税收竞争是效率最低的税务类型的税率。从而有助于拓展全球经济利益这块大蛋糕。所有国家制定的关于供应方面的税制改革，可以促进经济的大幅增长。但各国却不是争先恐后的去抢这一个固定的大蛋糕，而是创造一个对公民来说最最繁琐和繁荣的政府，在实践层方面，批判家们担心在世界各地没有一个种族会在收入最低层次上设置税收。财政保守派的官员可能曾经这样期望过，但对于一个冗杂的政府来说税收竞争就如同“饥饿困兽”眼中的食物。但是放眼望去，税收竞争将是政府税收增长的一个有价值的保护屏障。在未来几十年里，美国和其他国家在老年退休金和医疗计划的成本上将会大幅增加从而带来更大的税收压力增。在21世纪严厉的税收竞争机制将是政府实施有限保护作用的一个关键工具。较有实力的政府的支持者们知道，一个国家的福利过度膨胀对税收的竞争具有很大的危险性，这就是他们正试图限制福利过度膨胀的原因。他们的策略是给政府施加压力遵从国际协定的平衡税，并通过欧洲委员会分享彼此之间纳税人的信息，联合国也正在努力使联合国和经济合作与发展组织相互协作起来，以控制税收竞争并减轻税率下降的压力。也有人提议建立一个永久的世界税务组织，这将有助于执行限制竞争。这种努力限制税收竞争是一门糟糕的经济学，而他们却能提高个人隐私和人权问题。实现国家之间的个人财务信息的广泛共享是税收竞争者之间的共同目标。但是，政府在保存个人私密信息方面却有着不良记录。最近在英国出现了一个丑闻，一个级别不高的税务官员遗失了两个电脑磁盘，而这两个磁盘中包含了25万个人详细税收明细，以及金融和银行记录。然而当地市政府介入此