能说出用来促进创业活动的税收政策吗[文献翻译].doc

原文：Can state tax policies be used to promote entrepreneurial activity?Abstract Despite a recent flurry of empirical research on the effects of taxes on small business activity, state-level taxes faced by entrepreneurs have been overlooked by most of the existing literature. Using a 50-state panel of tax policy information spanning the years 1989 through 2002, our analysis reveals that state tax policies generally do not appear to have quantitatively important effects on entrepreneurial activity. When we find statistically important effects, we find that higher individual income tax rates, the existence of a state-level estate, inheritance or gift tax, and a higher weight on the sales factor in the state corporate income tax apportionment formula all slightly reduce a states share of the national entrepreneurial stock. Results also indicate that states with more progressive personal income tax structures and states that have more aggressive corporate income taxes through the imposition of a combined reporting requirement both tend to have slightly higher entrepreneurship rates. The composition of state tax portfolios is not found to be a significant determinant of state entrepreneurship.1 IntroductionThe interplay between tax policy and entrepreneurial activity has enjoyed a resurgence in the empirical economics literature. Most of the recent research has focused on federal taxes, however, leaving state tax policies relatively unexplored. As states continue to grapple with difficult issues in business taxation and development incentives, a thorough consideration of the effects of state tax policies on entrepreneurial activity becomes even more important, especially when considering the possible benefits that could follow new entrepreneurial ventures through economic growth, innovation, and the like. In this report, we examine the relationships between state tax policy and entrepreneurship using a longitudinal database of detailed information on state tax policies for all 50 US states from 1989 through 2002.This investigation is warranted for a number of reasons. First, as a result of the focus on federal taxes, earlier research has only considered a subset of the taxes facing small businesses. For example, Cline et al. (2006) show that the total state and local tax burden for US businesses includes much more than direct business taxes such as corporate income taxes or state franchise, excise, or gross receipts taxes. Businessesespecially small businessesalso pay significant amounts of property and sales taxes, along with a growing menu of miscellaneous charges and fees. The existing array of state tax structures provides a virtual cornucopia of exogenous policy variation that can be used to cleanly identify entrepreneurial responses. A second motivation for our study is the observation that state governments continue to debate and enact the bulk of pro-entrepreneurship policy in the US without the benet of hard data on the effects of those policies on small business development and success. On one hand, higher taxes might reduce entrepreneurial activity by lowering the returns. On the other hand, higher taxes increase the rewardsfrom tax avoidance or evasion and thus might have the undesirable effect of increasing entrepreneurial activity. These two impacts might also offset each other, such that higher taxes have no noticeable impact on entrepreneurial activity. The extent to which tax policiesespecially state tax policiesactually influence entrepreneurial activity requires empirical exploration. If taxes do not affect entrepreneurial activity (i.e., if the returns and avoidance effects are either both small or cancel each other out), using tax policy to encourage innovation or growth through entrepreneurship is not likely to be fruitful. Alternatively, if a nonzero effect can be determined, the actual parameter estimates can be used to more efficiently design tax policy to achieve desired changes in entrepreneurship.As stated above, our paper is one of only a few to investigate the relationship between state tax policy and entrepreneurship, as the large majority of the literature has focused on federal policy. We extend their line of analysis in the following general ways, all of which are discussed in detail below: (1) we consider a broader array of state tax policy variables, (2) we consider an additional measure of entrepreneurial activity drawn from tax return data, (3) we consider not only the stock of entrepreneurship in a state, but also a states share of national entrepreneurship in order to address location effects, (4) we consider not only tax rates but also tax shares in state tax portfolios, (5) we considereffective tax rates as a robustness check on our baseline analysis of statutory tax rates, (6) we consider agricultural entrepreneurship in another robustness check, and (7) we analyze a longer time period.2 Existing literatureTwo broad areas of study in the earlier literature motivate this analysis. The rst is the literature on the effects of state tax policies on business location decisions. These results are important because business location decisions can have important impacts on measured entrepreneurship or self-employment rates. In his oft-cited review of a vast array of empirical studies, Wasylenko(1997) concludes that taxes have statistically significant but quantitatively small effects on interregional location behavior. In a similar vein, Bartik (1991) concludes that higher state and local taxes reduce business activity in a region with an elasticity of about -0.3, while noting significant deviation from this average across studies.3 However, this literature may be slightly less relevant to the present study because of its focus on location decisions among firms. If smaller businesses are less mobile than larger rms (and they might not be), they are perhaps less likely to respond to state differences in tax policies. Further, most state development incentives are targeted at larger manufacturing rms rather than small businesses. The second broad area of relevant literature consists of empirical studies of taxation and entrepreneurship. The number of studies in this literature has grown significantly in recent years, largely due to greater availability of useful data. Time series studies have focused on federal tax policies and have generally concluded that higher federal income or payroll tax rates cause higher rates of entrepreneurship, specifically defined as self-employment (Long1982; Blau 1987; Parker 1996; Cowling and Mitchell 1997; Robson 1998). Explanations often rest on the idea that high tax rates drive workers out of paid employment, or wage jobs, into entrepreneurial ventures where they can more easily avoid or evade taxes. Despite the consistency of the larger group of times series studies, a more recent and extensive time series analysis in this area by Bruce and Mohsin (2006) shows that the question of how taxes affect entrepreneurship is not yet settled. In addition to personal income and payroll taxes, Bruce and Mohsin consider corporate income taxes, capital gains taxes and estate taxes. Results generally indicate that taxes have statistically significant but very small and scattered effects on entrepreneurship rates. Consequently, they are likely to be ineffective in generating desired changes in entrepreneurial activity. None of these studies consider the effects of state taxes. Several other studies have examined cross-sectional or panel micro data to examine the influence of tax policies on individual decisions about entrepreneurship. Results from these studies have also been inconclusive (Bruce and Gurley 2005; Bruce 2000, 2002; Carroll et al. 2001; Gentry and Hubbard 2000; Moore 2003; Schuetze 2000). While some of these have indicated that higher tax rates on self-employment income have ambiguous effects on self-employment rates, a growing consensus suggests that tax rate increases reduce entrepreneurial entry, growth, hiring, investment, and survival. State taxes have been considered in only a portion of these studies, however, and then only as a component of a combined federal and state income tax rate. A few studies have analyzed state-level time series or panel data to explicitly examine the effects of state tax policies on entrepreneurial activity and are therefore most relevant to the current paper. Carlton (1979) finds no strong evidence that local taxes influence the number of firm births. He uses rather rough proxies for tax variables, however, and only considers three industries for a limited time period. Bartik (1989) uses more detailed tax information and a broader array of industries and finds that higher property taxes, corporate taxes, and sales taxes on equipment negatively impact small business startups.4 He also finds that personal income taxes and general sales taxes are not statistically significant, while government spending has mixed effects depending on the category of spending. His survey of earlier studies finds elasticities that are generally below 0.5 in absolute value. Chen and Williams (1999) examine business failure rates from 1984 through 1993, estimating panel regressions for each of a number of industry categories. Although their focus is not exclusively on small businesses, they find that higher sales taxes per capita increase business failure rates for low-tech industries, while higher corporate income taxes per capita lead to lower failure rates for high-techindustries. Kreft and Sobel (2003) find that the existence of state inheritance taxes above the federal level is associated with lower rates of growth in the number of sole proprietors between 1996 and 2000. 3 Data and empirical methodologyA common criticism of virtually all measures of entrepreneurial or small business activity is that they include part-time and so-called partial entrepreneurs. No consensus has arisen about how to address this, or even what the consequences might be for empirical research.9 Further, for virtually any measure of entrepreneurship for which data are available, there are questions about the extent to which it actually measures what one might consider to be true entrepreneurship. Rather than focusing on a single measure or claiming that either or both of ours are better than other available measures then, we simply present parallel treatments of two alternatives in order gauge sensitivity of our results to the definition of entrepreneurship. In the analysis that follows, these two entrepreneurial measures are each viewed in two distinct ways. In our baseline specifications, we enter the state-specific entrepreneurship rates directly as described above. These values represent the stock of entrepreneurship in a state, as described above, and most closely relate to the self-employment rates used in much of the prior literature. With this approach our focus is more heavily toward the within-state effects of tax policy instead of on the cross-state locations effects of tax policy on entrepreneurship. As our primary focus is on the effects of tax policy on the tendency to start and maintain a small business, this approach is particularly useful because many entrepreneurs are involved only in smaller operations that do not span state boundaries.5 ConclusionsIn this study, we present an examination of state-level panel data for the period from 1989 through 2002 to better understand the relationship between state tax policies and entrepreneurial activity. Regression analyses indicate that top marginal state tax rates on corporate income and state sales tax rates do not have statistically significant effects on state entrepreneurship rates. This suggests that any disincentive effects of higher tax rates (due to lower returns from entrepreneurial activity) are offset by incentive effects due to the greater rewards from tax avoidance or evasion, or that both effects are individually small or insignificant.In contrast, higher top marginal state tax rates on personal income tend to reduce a states share of the national entrepreneurial stock. States with more aggressive corporate income taxes, specifications those that include combined reporting requirements, tend to have higher entrepreneurship rates. Paradoxically, states with more progressive individual income taxes also tend to have higher entrepreneurship rates. Higher weights on the sales factor in the corporate income tax apportionment formula and the existence of a state-level estate, inheritance, or gift tax above the federal estate tax are both associated with lower state shares of the national entrepreneurial stock. All of these effects are quite small in magnitude, however. We find no evidence of an economically significant effect of state tax portfolios on entrepreneurial activity.These results are important in the design of state tax policy, as they suggest that tax policy changes will probably not have the effects on small business activity that policy makers might believe. Rather than attempt to target tax breaks to small businesses, then, states should focus on traditional tax reforms involving lower tax rates, broader tax bases, and simpler tax systems that will create a more neutral and productive tax environment for small businesses, large businesses, and individuals alike.Source: Donald Bruce .John Deskins,2010 “Can state tax policies be used to promote entrepreneurial activity?”.Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. January.pp.99-110译文：能说出用来促进创业活动的税收政策吗?最近实证研究发现对小企业的税收影响活动中，企业家面临的国家级税收已经忽视了现有大多数文献。根据50家企业从1989年到2002年的税收信息，我们的分析发现，国家税收政策并未对企业纳税产生实质性影响。但是其对统计数据上有重要影响，我们发现，较高的个人所得税税率，国有资产、继承或赠与税的存在，以及销售比重较大的国有企业所得税分摊公式都能稍微降低其在全国企业股票中的份额。结果还表明，更多的个人所得税累进结构的国家和在没有通过联合报告要求实施更加积极的企业所得税税率的国家都往往有稍高的创业率。所以说国家税收组合并不是国家企业创业创收的决定性因素。税收政策和创业活动之间的相互作用在经济学的文献中一直享有的实证复兴的称号。最近的研究主要集中在联邦税，但是，离开国家税收政策相对来说考虑的少。随着国家继续在用业务发展来奖励税收和解决债券难点上的问题，对创业活动的国家税收政策的效果彻底审议变得更加重要，尤其是当考虑到可能带来的循环经济增长，创业企业创新的好处等等。在这份报告中，我们通过研究国家之间的税收政策和创业精神的关系，使用的是美国所有50个州从1989年到2002年国家税收政策的详细信息和纵向数据库。这项调查被一些原因证实。首先，早期的研究只考虑了小企业所面临税收的一部分作为对联邦税收集中的结果。例如，克莱因等人。更直接表明，占同期国家和地方包括美国企业的税务负担比，如营业税企业所得税或国家特许经营，消费税，或税收总收入。企业，尤其是小型企业，还支付财产和大量销售税，连同杂费和费用增长清单。税收结构的现有阵列状态提供了一个变化虚拟的外生政策聚宝盆，可以用于清晰地识别企业的反应。我们研究的第二个动机是观察美国政府继续进行辩论，制定对小企业成功发展和没有利益的政策。一方面，较高的税收可能减少企业的收益，从而降低创业活动。另一方面，较高的税收增长回报从避税或逃税来获得，因此可能有增加创业活动的不良效果。这两个影响可能还相互抵消，使得较高的税收不会对创业活动产生显著的影响。在何种程度上的税收政策，特别是国家税收政策，实际上是对企业创业活动需要的实证探索。如果税收政策不影响创业活动（即，如果回报和避税的相差较小或相互抵消），利用税收政策来鼓励创新或通过创业增长不太可能取得成果。另外，如果一个非零效果是确定的，实际的参数估计值可以用来更有效地设计税收政策并实现创业所需的更改。正如前文所述，我们的报纸只探讨少数几个国家税务政策和创业之间的关系，正如绝大多数的文献中主要集中在联邦政策。我们把视线分析集中在以下的一般方式，所有这一切都作详细的讨论如下:（1）我们认为一系列国家税务政策变量更广阔；（2）我们考虑一个税收回报数据来自额外的企业活动测量；（3）我们考虑国家创业是不仅是股票企业家的精神，也是一种国家解决位置份额的影响；（4）我们考虑不仅是税率而且也考虑税务股票投资组合州税；（5）我们考虑有效税率作为一种鲁棒性分析，看看我们的基线法定税率；（6）我们认为农业企业家在进行另一个鲁棒性检；（7）我们分析更长的时期。用一句话来总结我们的结果，我们发现国家税务政策并没有表现出进行了定量创业活动的重要的影响。我们的分析揭示了一般的一些潜在的有趣例外的主题。例如，在意大利的企业所得或销售税法定税率没有受企业精神的利率的影响， 我们发现，更高的最高边际税率个人所得税会减轻国家企业的股票的份额。此外，美国联合报告要求作为企业所得税有较高的创业率。现有的文献中两大领域研究的文献更早的激励这种分析。第一个是文献对国家税收政策对工作地点决定的健康影响。这些结果很重要，因为企业定位决策可以测量创业或对自我雇用率的提高具有重要的影响。在相同的面纱中，巴体克认为地方税中减少更高的状态商业活动的地区是有弹性的，然而，这种文学关系不大可能很浅的学习，因为直到现在，位置的决定重点在公司。如果小企业与大企业不移动（也可能不是）， 他们也许不那么容易产生国家税收的差异。此外，大多数国家激励发展税率针对的是更大的生产企业，而不是小型企业。第二广泛领域有关文献由实证研究税收和创业组成，近年来文学对目前的研究的数量已经大大提高，这在很大程度上是由于拥有了更大的可用性有用的数据。一般认为联邦税收政策的研究集中