1、1 中文 3413 字 本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 外文出处 Brookings Institution and Tax Policy Center 外文 作者 William G. Gale， Benjamin H. Harris 原文 ： A Value-Added Tax for the United States: Part of the Solution Administrative Issues A broad-based VAT would cost less to administer than the current income tax. For example,
2、 in the United Kingdom, administrative costs of the VAT were less than half of those of the income tax, measured as a share of revenue. Similarly, the New Zealand revenue department was required to intervene in just 3 percent of VAT returns, compared to 25 percent of income tax returns (GAO 2008). T
3、he VAT has compliance advantages over a retail sales tax, which aims to collect all revenue at the point of sale from a business to a household. Since revenue collection for the VAT is spread across stages of production, with producers receiving a credit against taxes paid as an incentive for compli
4、ance, the VAT in practice is less likely to be evaded. Theory and evidence suggest that the compliance burden would likely fall more heavily as a percentage of sales on smaller businesses. Most countries address these concerns by exempting small businesses from collecting the VAT. In 2007, 24 out of
5、 the 29 OECD countries with a VAT exempted businesses with gross receipts beneath specified thresholds, varying from $2,159 to $93,558 (OECD 2008). Finally, it is worth noting that, to the extent that administrative costs are fixed with respect to the VAT standard rate, the presence of such costs su
6、ggest that the VAT should be set at a relatively higher rate rather than a lower one. The States 2 Some analysts express concern that a national VAT would impinge on states ability to administer their own sales taxes. In our view, a national VAT could help states significantly. State retail sales ta
7、xes are poorly designed they exempt many goods and most services and collect more than 40 percent of their revenue from taxing business purchases, which should be exempt. Converting their sales taxes to VATs and piggybacking on a broad-based federal VAT would offer states several advantages. First,
8、the states could raise substantial amounts of revenue in a less distortionary manner than current sales taxes. Second, administrative costs, which currently exceed 3 percent of state sales tax revenue (PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2006), would decline. Many states currently link their income tax to the fe
9、deral income tax base, with obvious administrative and compliance advantages. Similar savings would accrue from linking federal and state VAT bases. Third, a national VAT would allow states and the federal government to tax previously difficult-to-tax transactions, such as interstate mail order and
10、internet sales. If the U.S. experience followed that of Canada, the federal government could collect revenue on behalf of states and absolve states of the cost of administering consumption taxes altogether (Duncan and Sedon 2010). In 2009, state and local sales tax revenue equaled 2.0 percent of GDP
11、 (authors calculations based on U.S. Census Bureau 2010). If the federal VAT had the broad base and demogrants described in Table 1, and the states and localities piggy-backed on that structure, an average subnational VAT of about 6 percent would raise the same revenue as existing state and local sa
12、les taxes.Alternatively, states could maintain their sales taxes or create their own VAT bases. Following the implementation of a federal VAT in Canada, most provinces maintained their existing tax codes for several years. Some provinces have yet to fully harmonize with the federal VAT, while Quebec
13、 administers its own VAT (Duncan and Sedon 2010). Anticipated VAT as Stimulus While a major tax increase would not be a good idea while the economy is still recovering slowly from recession, it is worth noting that there is potential for the announcement of a future VAT to be stimulative in the curr
14、ent period. By raising the 3 price of consumption goods in the future, or by doing so gradually over time via a phased-in VAT, the announcement would encourage people to spend more now and in the near future, when the economy needs the stimulus. This effect may not be very big there is little eviden
15、ce but it goes in the right direction. Will the VAT fuel expanding government? The VAT has been called a money machine in honor of its ability to raise substantial amounts of revenue. That is a helpful feature if the revenues are used to close deficits, but poses a problem if the boost in revenue si
16、mply fuels further unsustainable growth in federal spending. Some analysts reject any source of extra revenue including a VAT on the grounds that less government revenue leads to smaller government. In general, this starve the beast theory does not apply to most taxes, nor does it reflect recent exp
17、erience. Romer and Romer (2009), for example, find that tax cuts designed to spur long-run growth do not in fact lead to lower government spending； if anything, they find that tax cuts lead to higher spending. This finding is consistent with Gale and Orszag (2004b), who argue that the experience of
18、the last 30 years is more consistent with a coordinated fiscal discipline view, in which tax cuts were coupled with increased spending (as in the 1980s and 2000s) and tax increases were coupled with contemporaneous spending reductions (as in the 1990s). Given the widely recognized need for both spen
19、ding cuts and revenue increases to balance the budget, it is likely that any new revenue stream would be accompanied by reductions in spending. Some observers argue that the VAT is such an efficient and invisible tax that it has been and would be used to fuel government spending increases through a
20、gradually increasing VAT rate. Bartlett (2010a, 2010b) addresses this claim by noting that increased VAT rates in OECD countries were common among early adopters, who operated a VAT in the high-inflation environments in the 1970s, but far less common among countries that adopted a VAT after 1975. Among the 17 countries that instituted a VAT during the post-1975 period of relative price stability, four have not changed their VAT rate and four have decreased the rate； the average rate increase across all late-adopters of the VAT is less than 1 percentage point. The average VAT in
