财富不平等与遗产税的财富分布效应

Bequest Tax and Its Effects on Wealth Inequality

个人储蓄和财产遗赠等行为对于个体财富分布的差距具有重要影响。本文建立一个多期的世代交叠模型,并引入代际间生产力联系、意外遗产和主动遗产动机等因素。数值模拟分析结果显示,主动遗产动机会增加财富不平等程度并可以更好地拟合中国的实际数据,而只存在意外遗产的模型不能很好地解释财富分布差异。另一方面,本文重点关注遗产税对财富分布的影响,在基础模型中引入遗产税后发现,财富不平等程度降低,但过重的遗产税负会给高财富人群造成很大的福利损失。因此,本文提供两种方案进行政策模拟实验,包括降低遗产税率和提高遗产税起征点,使调整后的遗产税设置能更适应中国的现实情况并有效降低高财富群体的税负。

In this paper, we study how bequest motive and bequest tax affect wealth inequality through intergenerational wealth transfer. We establish an n-period overlapping generations model in which parents and children are linked by productiv-ity inheritance, accidental and voluntary bequest. We show that the model with voluntary bequest motive fits the China House-hold Finance Survey （CHFS） data well. On the other hand, this paper focuses on the impact of bequest tax on wealth distribu-tion. After introducing the bequest tax into the basic model, we find that the degree of wealth inequality is decreasing, but the excessive tax burden will cause great welfare loss to the richest population. Therefore, we experiment with two bequest tax schemes and the results indicate significant improvements in wealth equality without cutting the wealth share of the richest population by too much, a possibly better trade-off between equity and efficiency for China＇s current economic situation.