中国间接税税负归宿研究:汽车市场准自然实验的证据

Indirect Tax Incidence in China:Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment in the Vehicle Market

基于汽车之家的微观数据和2015年10月开始的车辆购置税减半征收政策,本文运用倍差法考察了车辆购置税的税负归宿,并分析了汽车的车辆购置税和增值税的收入分配效应。本文发现:车辆购置税减半征收优惠的85%为消费者所得;汽车销售价格对税率变化的调整非常迅速;尽管消费者获得了减税优惠的70%以上,但是购置搭载了升级发动机(涡轮增压发动机)的消费者获得的减税优惠明显更少;购买外国品牌汽车的消费者获得的减税优惠更多;车辆购置税减半征收未导致收入不平等程度的降低。这些结果表明,我国车辆购置税的税率变化能有效传导到价格,其对消费和环境保护的影响是可期的。作为从价税,车辆购置税的税负归宿为我国间接税税负归宿提供了启示。

Tax incidence is one of the most important themes in public economics. When governments consider implementing a tax increase or a tax cut, they need to consider who will bear the increased tax burden or who will benefit from the tax cut. The numerous empirical studies that have examined these issues over the last three decades have enhanced our understanding of tax incidence, tax policies, and the economic effects of tax. Since the 1990s, indirect taxes have accounted for more than half of the total tax revenue in China. However, because few empirical studies have examined the incidence of indirect tax in China, our understanding of indirect tax incidence is mainly confined to theoretical analyses. In addition, China's Gini coefficient has remained above 0.46 for the last two decades, and income inequality has long been a focal topic of discussion. Moreover, environmental pollution, especially air pollution, is a serious problem in China. Thus, we also need to deepen our understanding of how tax affects both income distribution and environmental pollution. Although a large body of research has examined the impact of tax on income distribution, carbon emissions, and economic growth, due to the lack of empirical research, these studies impose some assumptions regarding tax incidence;for example, they usually assume that buyers bear all of the tax.Consistent estimation of the division of the tax incidence between buyers and sellers requires some form of exogenous shock. In 2015, China's central government suddenly cut vehicle purchase tax by half, providing a quasi-natural experiment to estimate tax incidence and analyze the impact of indirect tax in the vehicle market on China's income distribution. Specifically, on September 29, 2015, the Ministry of Finance of China and the State Taxation Administration of China unexpectedly announced a joint tax cut policy that reduced the tax rate from 10% to 5% on vehicles with engines smaller than 1.6 liters from October 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016.In this paper, we use data from the largest automobile website in China (www.autohome.com), which provides an active forum for vehicle buyers. Numerous buyers search for vehicle information on the website before making purchases and post transaction information, including the purchase timing, location, and price, and their opinions after the purchase. We collected all of the transaction data from 2014 to 2016 on the website, and restricted the main sample to the transactions that occurred between September 2015 and December 2015 according to our research question. In one of our robustness checks, we also use a wider window of transactions between September 2015 and March 2016.Based on the unexpected change in the tax rate and the online micro transaction data, we use a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the tax incidence. We find that overall buyers obtain 85% of the tax cut, the vehicle prices respond to the tax cut within one month, which is very quick, and the buyers of turbocharged cars and foreign-brand cars obtain 71% and 88% of the tax reductions, respectively. These results suggest that changes in the tax rate are effectively transmitted to the price, which implies that the tax cut can be expected to affect consumption and environmental pollution. Combining the sample data with data from the 2015 China Household Finance Survey, we find that the tax reduction had no substantial effect on income distribution.This paper contributes to the literature in the following ways. First, the literature on tax incidence in China is mainly either qualitative or assumes that the buyers bear all of the tax burden, whereas we estimate the tax incidence based on micro data. We also investigate whether the vehicle purchase tax cut affects the income distribution, which should shed light on how indirect tax influences the income distribution in China. Second, the research on tax incidence, especially on indirect vehicle taxes, has mainly focused on developed countries. This paper provides evidence from a developing country, which is also the largest vehicle market in the world. Third, although few studies have investigated the dynamics of tax incidence, we make some headway in dynamically analyzing the tax incidence.