Vat, Tariffs, and Withholding: Border Taxes and Informality in Developing Countries
Vat, Tariffs, and Withholding: Border Taxes and Informality in Developing Countries
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增值税、关税和预扣税：发展中国家的边境税和非正规性
DOI：
10.1016/j.jpubeco.2008.05.006
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发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Keen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Keen
本文探讨了增值税（VAT）的一个显著特征的影响，这一特征被实践者强调，但在很大程度上被理论家忽视：它的功能，部分是对非正规经营者从正规部门企业购买的税收，尤其是对他们的进口。它还强调了许多发展中国家征收的预扣税的潜在重要性，而这一点也被忽视了。它表明，在一个简单的模型的非正规性，如果这两种手段都是最佳部署，然后通常的处方，一个小的经济不应该部署关税仍然有效，即使在存在的非正规部门;并建立了一个简单的策略--推广在没有非正式性的模型中开发的标准处方--运用这些工具，以在面对提高效率的关税削减时保持政府收入和增加福利。只有增值税是完全最佳的，因为它在一定程度上是对非正规部门生产的一种税。但它们是有限制的：一般来说，一个有效的税收结构需要同时部署增值税和预扣税。
This paper explores the implications of a distinctive feature of the value added tax (VAT) that is stressed by practitioners but has been largely overlooked by theorists: that it functions, in part, as a tax on the purchases of informal operators from formal sector businesses and, not least, on their imports. It also stresses the potential importance of the withholding taxes that are levied by many developing countries — which have also been ignored. It is shown, in a simple model of informality, that if both of these instruments are optimally deployed then the usual prescription that a small economy should not deploy tariffs remains valid even in the presence of an informal sector; and a simple strategy is established — generalizing the standard prescription developed in models without informality — for deploying these instruments so as to preserve government revenue and increase welfare in the face of efficiency-improving tariff cuts. Conditions are established under which a VAT alone is fully optimal, precisely because it is in part a tax on informal sector production. But they are restrictive: in general, an efficient tax structure requires deploying both a VAT and withholding taxes.