《Global Tax Revolution》翻书笔记

作者：Chris Edwards, Daniel J. Mitchell
出版社：Cato Institute
副标题：The Rise of Tax Competition and the Battle to Defend It
发行时间：2008年
来源：下载的 epub 版本
Goodreads：4.29（7 Ratings）
豆瓣：无

概要

一本倡导使用 Flat Tax 进行税务革命的书，「Flat Tax」这个概念所主要针对的是「阶梯税率」的那种「高收入的收税45%，低收入的收税10%」的模式，Flat Tax 则无论收入多寡，统一征收一个相同的税率，作者笔下的税务革命，就是指的用 Flat Tax 替代所有其他的复杂征税方式

作者介绍

Chris Edwards is director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato in 2001, Edwards was a senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee. From 1994 to 1998, he was a consultant and manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers examining corporate tax and tax reform issues. From 1992 to 1994, he was an economist with the Tax Foundation. Edwards has frequently testified before Congress on fiscal issues, and his articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, and other major newspapers. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics. Edwards is also author of Downsizing the Federal Government.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CatoEdwards
Blog: https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/blog

Daniel J. Mitchell is a top expert on tax reform and pro-growth economic policies. His research is focused on international tax competition, and he frequently speaks to U.S. and foreign audiences about the topic. Prior to joining Cato, Mitchell was a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation and an economist for Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. He served on the 1988 presidential transition team and was director of tax and budget policy for Citizens for a Sound Economy. His articles have appeared in major newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Investor’s Business Daily, and he is a frequent guest on radio and television news shows. Mitchell holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/danieljmitchell
Blog: https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/

两位作者都是自由主义者，后者应该是无政府主义者

读后感

以前荔枝巴别塔读书会的要求阅读书目，晚了一年终于补上，在作者撰写此书的10年前，全球有26个使用 Flat Tax 的国家，现在全世界有37个，不知道后面会怎么样

以前读《李炜光说财税》懂得了财税的历史，这次读完《Global Tax Revolution》差不多对财税制度的发展趋势有了了解，去年川普的减税也佐证了这一趋势的不可逆，作者所倡导和保护的国家间的税制自由竞争，正在朝着理论所设定的轨迹发展着，这种发展最终走向的反向，就是每个人的更加自由

书因为是 Cato Institute 的缘故，所以全书都是围绕对美国政府的建言建策，但是我觉得对中国也受用，未来很长一段时间的全球税务竞争，都离不开这本书中所涉及的理论框架

爱沙尼亚真的是一个有趣的地方，只有130万人的小国家，1991年独立的时候全国只有一部卫星电话，用近30年时间发展出来全欧洲最完善的网络环境和基础教育（5岁以上儿童进行编程知识教育）。爱沙尼亚在20多年前开始领导了这次 Flat Tax 革命，2016年跟着美国全球第二个通过了「马格尼茨基人权问责法」，上一任总统 Toomas Hendrik Ilves 现在在世界经济论坛（就是达沃斯会议）领导一个 Council on Blockchain，被英国巴克莱银行评为全世界数字发展第一名

新学习到一个全球化的知识点，其实 BAT 这样的企业在做的也是类似的事情，未来中国更多的参与全球贸易的时候，也会做这样的事情：
Here is the key point: foreign investment by U.S. corporations mainly complements domestic investment, it does not substitute for it. The expansion of U.S. corporations abroad often means a complementary expansion in the U.S. operations of those companies. Consider research and development spending. The larger the global sales of a U.S. corporation, the more profit it can earn by investing in R&D.

摘录

A fear is haunting big governments around the world—the fear of rising tax competition. As globalization advances, individuals and businesses are gaining greater freedom to work and invest in countries with lower taxes. That freedom is eroding the monopoly power of governments and forcing them to reform their tax systems and restrain their fiscal appetites.
Many governments have responded to globalization with tax cuts designed to improve competitiveness and spur growth. Individual income tax rates have plunged in recent decades, and more than two dozen nations have replaced their complex income taxes with simple flat taxes. At the same time, nearly every country has slashed its corporate tax rate, recognizing that business investment and profits have become highly mobile in today’s economy.
That is the good news. The bad news is that some governments and international organizations are trying to restrict tax competition. A battle is unfolding between those policymakers wanting to maximize taxation and those understanding that competition is leading to beneficial tax reforms. If plans to stifle tax competition gain ground, growth will be undermined, governments will grow larger, and economic freedom will be curtailed.
In this book, we chronicle the rise in tax competition, which was spurred by the unleashing of international capital flows beginning in the 1970s. We survey the exciting tax reforms that are taking place around the world and explain how these reforms benefit average workers and families. We also examine the backlash against tax competition and describe why the arguments of the critics are mistaken.
The concluding chapter discusses reform options for the United States. In many ways, America has fallen behind on tax reform and now its climate for investment is inferior to that of other major countries. As tax competition intensifies, it is crucial to overhaul the federal tax code to ensure America’s continued prosperity and leadership in the world economy.

Friedman skillfully analyzed these trends focusing on technology, skilled workers, and education. But Friedman’s book largely ignored the globalization of capital and the importance of America creating a receptive climate for investment.
Friedman focused on labor, but mainly overlooked capital. Friedman also missed the growing importance of tax competition. Yet rising tax competition is a direct result of the flat world economy. As individuals and businesses have gained freedom to take advantage of foreign opportunities, the sensitivity of economic decisions to taxation has increased.

Following Britain’s lead in the mid-1980s, all major economies have cut their corporate tax rates. Just since the mid-1990s, the average corporate tax rate in the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has fallen from 38 percent to 27 percent. During the same period, the average rate in the European Union plunged from 38 percent to 24 percent.
Since 2000, corporate tax cuts have included Austria (34 to 25 percent), Canada (45 to 34 percent), Germany (52 to 30 percent), Greece (40 to 25 percent), Iceland (30 to 18 percent), Italy (41 to 31 percent), the Netherlands (35 to 26 percent), and Portugal (35 to 25 percent). But corporate tax cuts have spread beyond the OECD countries. This decade, there have been cuts in far-flung places such as Albania (20 to 10 percent), Egypt (40 to 20 percent), Mauritius (25 to 15 percent), Romania (25 to 16 percent), and Russia (35 to 24 percent).
Individual income tax rates have also been cut sharply. The average top rate in the OECD has plummeted 26 percentage points since 1980. Again the trend is global, with the average top rate falling by a similarly large amount in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. In addition, 25 nations have scrapped their multirate income taxes and installed flat taxes. The average individual tax rate in this ‘‘flat tax club’’ is just 17 percent.
Most countries have also cut tax rates on dividends and capital gains. Many countries have cut or eliminated taxes on estates and inheritances, and many have abolished annual taxes on wealth, which used to be popular in Europe. Further, withholding taxes on cross-border investments have been cut sharply around the world. All these types of taxes have mobile tax bases, and policymakers figured out that imposing high rates would cause domestic investment to decline and tax bases to shrink dramatically.
The international tax landscape has become remarkably dynamic. After reforms in 1986, the United States had one of the lowest corporate tax rates. But since then, U.S. policymakers have fallen asleep at the switch as other countries have continued to cut. The United States now has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world. In today’s global economy, if a country stands still, it falls behind.

Tax competition has been driven by a handful of leading countries, which have inspired others to pursue similar reforms. In the 1980s, Britain and the United States led the way with large cuts to individual and corporate tax rates. In the 1990s, Ireland’s rock-bottom business taxes created an investment boom that has been hugely influential in Europe. More recently, it has been flat tax nations such as Estonia and Slovakia that have inspired other countries to pursue reforms.

The revolution was put into motion by Estonia, which installed a flat tax in 1994 and saw its economy transformed from a basket case to a booming Baltic Tiger. Today, there are 25 jurisdictions in the ‘‘flat tax club,’’ and they are virtually all enjoying economic booms

During the Bretton Woods era of fixed currency exchange rates (1945–1972), governments needed capital controls to prevent private markets from putting upward or downward pressure on currencies.4 Those controls aimed at allowing governments to run independent monetary policies while still enjoying the stability of fixed currency exchange rates.
Capital controls also made it easier for governments to maintain high tax rates on investment income, which was a popular policy in the mid-20th century. With capital controls, governments essentially built fences around the income and wealth of their citizens, and locked people into national economic prisons.
The Bretton Woods system worked to the benefit of governments, but it eventually became unstable. After the system broke down in the 1970s, many countries allowed their currencies to float, and that removed the need to restrict private capital movements. As countries adopted floating exchange rates, they could open their borders and allow free flows of investment capital. In this open system, inflows and outflows of capital are balanced by exchange rate movements, without the need for government intervention.

Another spur to investment has been deregulation through bilateral treaties. A study by the United Nations found that more than 70 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and double-taxation treaties (DTTs) have been signed every year in recent years.9 These treaties generally reduce taxes and regulations on capital flows between pairs of countries. By 2006, there were 2,573 BITs and 2,651 DTTs in existence. While a few governments have taken steps to increase regulations on investment, the UN found that 90 percent of law changes for foreign investment since 2000 have been deregulatory in nature.

Investments in China, for example, represented just 1 percent of the total U.S. FDI stock in 2006. And the purpose of much of that 1 percent is to penetrate China’s growing market. For example, Ford Motor Company opened its second major automobile assembly plant in China in 2007 with an investment of $500 million. With the Nanjing plant, Ford will increase its Chinese production to 410,000 cars annually for the rapidly expanding Chinese market. Ford also invested $500 million in India in 2007 to double its local automobile production capacity to serve the growing Indian consumer class.
The main reason that U.S. corporations invest abroad is to penetrate lucrative and growing foreign markets and to expand global sales. Most U.S. FDI is in high-income countries such as Britain because that is where companies can sell the most products. In other words, U.S. corporations mainly invest abroad to sell products abroad. The BEA’s Kozlow concluded that the most important determinant of FDI location is access to large and prosperous markets. BEA data show that 90 percent of the sales of U.S. foreign affiliates are in foreign markets, and only 10 percent were sales to the United States.
Moreover, U.S. foreign investment drives U.S. exports. In 2005, U.S. multinational corporations were responsible for 54 percent of all U.S. exports of goods. Former presidential candidate Ross Perot talked about a ‘‘giant sucking sound’’ caused by open borders’ supposedly damaging the economy. In reality, that sound is U.S. foreign affiliates sucking exports out of U.S. factories and into foreign markets. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that every dollar of outward FDI from a country is associated with $2 of additional exports from that country.
Here is the key point: foreign investment by U.S. corporations mainly complements domestic investment, it does not substitute for it. The expansion of U.S. corporations abroad often means a complementary expansion in the U.S. operations of those companies. Consider research and development spending. The larger the global sales of a U.S. corporation, the more profit it can earn by investing in R&D.
And where do U.S. corporations do their R&D? They mainly do it in the United States. In 2005, 86 percent of the R&D performed by U.S. multinational companies was in the United States. And the U.S. R&D of these companies accounted for 79 percent of R&D performed by all U.S. businesses. Further, the BEA data show that as the global sales of U.S. multinational companies have grown in recent years, the number of U.S. R&D jobs in multinational companies has increased sharply. Thus, the global growth and profitability of U.S. multinational companies are crucial to the future of privatesector innovation in the United States.
Consider Intel Corporation, the world’s largest semiconductor company. In 2006, it had revenues of $35 billion, of which 84 percent came from outside the United States. Yet, more than half Intel’s 94,000 employees are in the United States. And, importantly, fourfifths of the firm’s $5 billion in annual R&D occurs in the United States.

As U.S. companies expand abroad, they usually strengthen their headquarters activities in the United States. Headquarters activities are often high-skill and high-pay, such as finance, planning, and R&D. Glenn Hubbard, former chief economics adviser to President Bush, noted that ‘‘where a firm chooses to place its headquarters will have a large influence on how much that country benefits from its domestic and international operations.’’ For this reason, government policies should try to create a favorable tax climate for corporate headquarters, but U.S. policymakers are doing just the opposite of industry

In the 1980s, the big story in tax competition was the reduction in individual and corporate income tax rates in major industrial countries such as Britain and the United States. In the 1990s, tax rate cuts intensified and spread to a broader group of countries. In this decade, the most exciting tax competition story is the flat tax revolution. By 2008, 25 jurisdictions had adopted single-rate individual income taxes. This ‘‘flat tax club’’ is growing larger every year.
Ironically, it is the former communist world that is the hotbed of flat tax reforms. From the Czech Republic in the west to Mongolia in the east, 17 nations in the former Soviet bloc have joined the flat tax club. These nations have adopted flat taxes to spur growth, reduce tax avoidance, and attract foreign investment. Reform leaders, such as Estonia and Slovakia, inspired a broader group of countries to join the flat tax revolution.
In numerous countries, flat tax reforms have been supported by political parties on both the right and the left. Flat tax countries have made the choice to scrap multirate, or ‘‘progressive,’’ income tax systems in favor of single-rate systems that have fewer deductions, exemptions, and credits. Today, the average individual tax rate in the flat tax countries is just 17 percent. Most of the flat tax countries have also cut their corporate tax rates, and the average corporate rate in those nations stands at just 18 percent.

A ‘‘flat tax’’ generally refers to a direct tax on individuals that has a single statutory rate. The flat tax concept also embodies the ideas that special tax preferences should be abolished, people should be treated equally, and income should be taxed only once. The ideal flat tax structure was described by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka of the Hoover Institution in a 1983 book, The Flat Tax. The HallRabushka flat tax was championed in the 1990s by then House majority leader Dick Armey and presidential candidate Steve Forbes. The Hall-Rabushka flat tax system would abolish the federal income tax and replace it with a tax system with three key features: a single flat rate, elimination of special preferences, and neutral treatment of savings and investment.
Single Flat Rate. The flat tax has a single statutory rate above a basic exemption amount. The goal is to treat taxpayers equally while bringing the tax rate down as low as possible to reduce economic distortions. Equality under the law is a bedrock principle of justice, and that is the promise of the flat tax. A low, flat rate reduces the tax penalty on productive activities and encourages tax compliance. In addition, a low tax rate is increasingly important to attracting labor and capital in the competitive global economy.
Elimination of Special Preferences. The flat tax eliminates provisions of the tax code that create special advantages for certain people and industries. By getting rid of deductions, credits, and other narrow benefits, economic growth is promoted by allowing resources to flow to the highest-valued uses, rather than to activities that have unwarranted tax advantages. Cleaning the special-interest provisions from the tax code would result in huge simplification, and it would reduce political corruption caused by the trading of campaign support for narrow tax benefits.
Neutral Treatment of Savings and Investment. The optimal flat tax would tax each source of income just once. By contrast, under the current U.S. income tax, some income is not taxed and other income is taxed multiple times. Under a well-designed flat tax, there would be no capital gains tax and no double taxation of dividends. A flat tax in the design of Hall-Rabushka would end the tax bias against savings and investment that occurs under the current federal income tax.

Estonia had the breakthrough reform with the introduction of a 26 percent flat tax in 1994. Prime Minister Mart Laar, a former history professor, provided the visionary leadership. Laar was wondering how to rescue the floundering Estonian economy and recalled reading that economist Milton Friedman had advocated a flat tax. Laar wisely ignored the advice of establishment tax experts in Estonia and the international bureaucracies, and he introduced Estonia’s flat tax as part of a broad reform agenda.
Estonia’s dramatic tax reform made its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, take notice. Those countries quickly proceeded to adopt their own flat taxes. Although all three Baltic nations initially introduced flat taxes with fairly high rates, those rates have been cut in the years since.

Tax competition is a tool to preserve limited government in the 21st century. That is why America needs to be a leader in protecting and enhancing global tax competition. U.S. policymakers should oppose tax harmonization, the creation of world tax authorities, widespread information sharing between governments, and other techniques designed to stifle competition.
U.S. policymakers also need to embrace tax reform because American wages and incomes depend on the efficiency of our tax system. Our overall tax burden is less onerous than in many other industrial nations, but our tax system lags behind the ‘‘best practices’’ of other advanced nations in many important ways. Federal tax rates on corporate income, corporate capital gains, dividends, estates, and other items are higher than in most countries. The individual and corporate income tax systems are hugely complex and distortionary. If the government retains this tax code as other countries make further reforms, America will tumble in the rankings of the wealthiest and most competitive nations.
The United States has been on the sidelines of tax reform for two decades as countries such as Estonia, Ireland, and Slovakia have forged a path of remarkable pro-growth changes. This chapter describes how America can get back in the saddle on tax reform. A first step is to cut individual income tax rates to 15 and 25 percent and abolish narrow breaks in the tax code. The corporate tax rate should be cut to 15 percent and territorial taxation adopted. The long-term goal is a low-rate flat tax that encourages investment and growth, while providing equal treatment to all taxpayers.

The United States should aspire to have the best tax system in the world. U.S. policymakers should grab the tax reform baton from leaders in Estonia and Ireland and run with it. The United States has not pursued major tax reforms in more than two decades, but the need for reforms is more urgent than ever. Tax competition is growing ever more intense in the ‘‘flat’’ global economy.
Enacting the tax reforms we described would be a giant step toward putting America back in first place on economic freedom and prosperity. Cutting tax rates is the key to reform, particularly the rates on the most mobile tax bases, such as corporate profits and individual savings. A low-rate flat tax that eliminates hurdles to savings and investment is the gold standard of reform that policymakers should aim for.
U.S. policymakers also have a crucial role to play in ensuring that tax competition continues to thrive in the global economy. Tax competition is a powerful force for better tax policy, and it will be a crucial defense in coming years against tax increases to fund runaway entitlement spending. The United States should veto all efforts to impose global tax rules, and it should lead the fight for economic freedom, growth, and tax competition.

单词列表:

words	sentence
On the flip side	On the flip side, the United States also benefits from inflows of investment from foreigners