单一税是否会加剧收入不平等?——基于合成控制法的经验证据  

Do Flat Tax Reforms Increase Income Inequality?——Evidence from Synthetic Control Methods

作　　者：马胜楠 MA Sheng-nan(Institute of Finance and Economics,Central University of Finance and Economics,Beijing 100081,China)

机构地区：[1]中央财经大学财经研究院,北京100081

出　　处：《经济体制改革》2021年第2期152-160,共9页Reform of Economic System

摘　　要：单一税制目前被30多个国家采用。单一税对公平与效率的权衡是否比累进税制更具优势,学术界尚存在分歧。本文采用合成控制法对8个单一税实施国的收入不平等效应进行了政策评估。研究结果显示:单一税普遍加剧了实施国的收入不平等水平,基尼系数比假设未实施单一税年均提升了0.03~0.08;使用迭代法与双重差分法进行稳健性检验之后结论依然成立。鉴于当前我国收入分配"群体不平衡",进一步缩小收入差距是税制改革的政策目标之一,在此视角下单一税不适宜为我国采用。我国个税改革应以优化个人所得税结构为主,进一步提高免征额和调整累进税率,有效降低中低收入群体的税负,同时营造良好的税收环境。Tax reforms are often motivated by their potential to improve income distributions. As a fundamental reform of the taxation system, flat tax is currently adopted by more than 30 countries. There is still a disagreement about whether flat tax system has an advantage over equity and efficiency compared with progressive tax system. This paper analyzes the impact of flat tax reforms on income inequality using synthetic control methods and identifyies the eight eastern and central European countries that adopted flat tax systems between 1994 and 2008, compares post-reform Gini coefficients of "treated" countries with a convex combination of similar but "untreated" countries, while accounting for the time-varying impact of unobservable heterogeneity. This paper finds positive impacts in seven countries and negative impact in one country, with six out of eight cases significant at the conventional level. Considering the unbalanced situation of income distributions in China, flat tax reform is not suitable to adopt for China, while its concept of simplifying the tax system, reducing the tax rate, cleaning the tax base and tightening the tax collection and management is still worth learning.

关 键 词：收入不平等 税制改革 单一税 合成控制法 

分 类 号：F113.1[经济管理—国际贸易]