The taxation of human capital

税收和福利制度和教育财政制度通过区别对待前期成本、放弃的收益和未来回报，以及通过为收益风险提供保险，改变了人力资本投资(例如教育)的价值。在这样做的过程中，与不投资相比，它们影响了对人力资本投资的动机，与其他类型的投资相比，如金融投资，它们也影响了人力资本投资的动机。这些都是政策制定需要考虑的潜在重要扭曲。该项目的总体目标是使用了解社会和英国家庭小组调查数据，以及生命周期建模技术，提供新的证据，说明实际和假想改革的英国税收和福利制度以及教育财政制度(包括苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰的制度)如何扭曲人力资本投资的回报。为此，我们将解决以下研究问题：-如何对人力资本投资征税？-不同人口亚群和不同人生阶段的税率如何变化？-税收、福利和教育财政制度如何有效地防范回报的不确定性？-这些特征在不同的政策环境下如何变化？-行为反应如何影响这些结果？尽管在这一领域已经做了一些工作，但关于税收和福利制度以及教育财政制度对待人力资本投资的方式仍有许多我们不知道的东西。现有的作品有一个共同的缺点，那就是它们都是理想化的环境中的个人。这意味着，对个人差异的考虑有限，对不确定性的关注不够，对税收和福利的初步建模，对政策的行为影响没有考虑。我们将考虑两种类型的人力资本投资--教育和劳动力市场经验--并使用两种衡量人力资本投资如何征税的指标--有效税率(ETR)和参与税率(PTR)。ETR衡量内部投资回报率受税收、福利和补贴的影响程度。这是以前用来描述的指标，例如，税收系统如何处理不同资产中持有的储蓄回报。PTR描述了由于更高的税收和更低的福利(可能被补贴抵消)而损失的投资回报的比例。我们的分析将以英国为基础，并将基于谅解协会和英国家庭小组调查(BHPS)的数据集，辅之以政府部门和机构(例如教育基金署)发布的每名学生教育支出的数据和IFS以前的工作，以及学生收入和支出调查中与教育相关的支出的信息。在项目的第一阶段，我们将使用这些数据对就业、收入和人力资本投资成本进行描述性分析。在第二阶段，我们将使用第一阶段的数据和结果来估计人力资本投资如何征税。这项研究将基于教育、就业和储蓄选择的生命周期模型，使我们能够计算上述ETR和PTR。这项研究是对当前文献的重大进步，提供了对人力资本投资税率的准确和详细估计，并开发了一种可应用于其他环境的方法。我们还预计将对政策制定者产生重大影响，增进对税收和福利制度以及教育财政制度如何影响积累人力资本的激励的理解，并影响未来的政策决策。我们将利用BIS和HMRC的项目合作伙伴来确保实现这些影响。

The tax and benefit system and education finance regime alter the value of human capital investments (e.g. education) by treating up-front costs, forgone earnings and future returns differently, and by insuring against earnings risk. In so doing, they affect the incentive to invest in human capital compared with not investing, and compared with other kinds of investment, such as financial investments. These are potentially important distortions that policymaking needs to take into account. The overall aim of this project is to use Understanding Society and British Household Panel Survey data, together with lifecycle modelling techniques, to provide new evidence on how the returns to human capital investments are distorted by actual and hypothetically-reformed UK tax and benefit systems and education finance regimes (including those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). To that end, we will address the following research questions:- How are investments in human capital taxed?- How do tax rates vary across different population subgroups and stages of life?- How effectively do taxes, benefits and the education finance regime insure against uncertainty in returns?- How do these features vary under different policy environments?- How do behavioural responses affect these results?Although some work has been done in this area, there remains much about the way that the tax and benefit system and education finance regime treat human capital investments that we do not know. Existing work has the common disadvantage that it is all for example individuals in idealised settings. This means there is limited consideration of variation across individuals, no attention paid to uncertainty, rudimentary modelling of taxes and benefits and no allowance for the behavioural effect of policies. These are important limitations, which our proposed approach will address.We will consider two types of human capital investment - education and labour market experience - and use two measures of how investments in human capital are taxed - an effective tax rate (ETR) and a participation tax rate (PTR). The ETR measures how much the internal rate of return to investment is affected by taxes, benefits and subsidies. This is the measure that has been used previously to describe, e.g. how the tax system treats the return to saving held in different assets. The PTR describes what proportion of the return to investment is lost due to higher taxes and lower benefits, possibly offset by subsidies. This has been widely used in the literature on financial work incentives.Our analysis will be for the UK and will be based on the Understanding Society and British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) datasets, supplemented with published data on educational spending per pupil from Government departments and agencies (e.g. the Education Funding Agency) and previous IFS work, and information about education-related expenses from the Student Income and Expenditure Survey. In the first stage of the project, we will use these data to produce descriptive analysis of employment, earnings and human capital investment costs. In the second stage, we will use the data and the results of the first stage to estimate how investments in human capital are taxed. This will be based on a lifecycle model of education, employment and saving choices that will allow us to calculate the ETRs and PTRs described above.This research represents a significant advance over the current literature, providing accurate and detailed estimates of the tax rates on investment in human capital and developing a methodology that can be applied in other settings. We also anticipate having significant impact on policymakers, improving understanding over how the tax and benefit system and education finance regime affect incentives to accumulate human capital, and affecting future policy decisions. We will exploit project partners in BIS and HMRC to ensure these impacts are realised.