Essays on Taxation

Abstract

There are three chapters in this thesis.

The first chapter studies the impact of different tax reforms of property tax and income tax on equilibrium house prices, rents, homeownership, and social welfare. Firstly, we examine the implication of the change in the proportional property tax rate. Our results show that increasing the proportional property tax rate decreases the homeownership rate and generates welfare losses. Secondly, we replace the proportional property tax with a progressive property tax system. We find that a more progressive property tax system generates a higher homeownership rate and more welfare gains. Thirdly, as we increase the progressivity of the income tax system, the low-income households have more after-tax income so that they have more incentive to purchase houses. Yet, the effect is limited. Again, we find that a more progressive income tax system generates higher welfare gains. In a nutshell, higher progressivity on income and property tax help induce the renters to become homeowners and improve the social welfare.

The second chapter studies the implications of an increase in consumption tax rates and the introduction of a progressive consumption tax system on economic aggregates, social welfare, and inequalities. We use a large-scale overlapping generation model with and without endogenous human capital accumulation. Our results show that when the consumption tax rate increases, the capital stock, the labour supply, and the output increase. In addition, the wealth inequality is mitigated. The presence of human capital accumulation does not change the direction of results. If the consumption tax rate is too high, the welfare loss is observed in both model settings. We show that switching to a progressive consumption tax system generates welfare gains in both models.

The third chapter analyses the optimal tax combination using a model that incorporates differential mortality and human capital accumulation. We calculate the optimal combinations of the capital income tax, consumption tax, and progressive labour income tax rates for the Chinese economy under four different model settings: standard life-cycle model without human capital accumulation (NHC), NHC model with differential mortality (NHC+DM), the life-cycle model with human capital accumulation (HC), HC model with differential mortality (HC+DM). Our results of implementing the optimal capital income tax rates in the Chinese economy are 8.1%, 7.9%, 2.6%, and 15.4%, respectively. The optimal labour income tax includes a 41.6% marginal tax rate with 98,010 yuan fixed deduction, a 21.0% marginal tax rate with 97,253 yuan deduction, a 3.1% marginal tax rate with 96,225 yuan deduction, and an 18.5% marginal tax rate with 97,535 yuan deduction, respectively. In a nutshell, we find that the optimal tax bundles under each model are different for China. It would be better to incorporate both human capital accumulation and differential mortality as a more comprehensive model for optimal taxation analysis in China. Show more