公共支出与个人税收道德——对税收价格论的实证检验

Public Expenditure and Personal Tax Morale—Empirical Test for Tax Price Theory

根据税收价格论,税收是人们为享用政府提供的公共产品所支付的成本。除不依法纳税可能面临的惩罚外,人们之所以愿意纳税,在于人们获得了政府用公共支出提供的公共产品和服务。本文在理论分析的基础上,实证分析公共支出对税收道德的影响,研究发现:公共支出的增加能显著地提升个人税收道德,这一提升作用主要源于民生支出,财政维持性支出则显著地抑制了个体的税收道德,生产性支出对税收道德的影响并不显著;公共支出对个人税收道德的提升作用具有职业异质性,公共支出显著提升了私营部门从业者的税收道德,而对政府或国有企事业单位工作者税收道德的影响不显著;进一步分析表明,政府信任是公共支出增进个人税收道德的重要渠道。本文从税收道德的角度为“税收价格论”提供了经验证据,同时表明,为提升个人税收道德、增进税收遵从,应适度增加公共支出,优化公共支出结构。

According to the tax price theory,tax is the price people pay to public goods provided by the government.In addition to the potential penalties for not paying taxes legally,people are willing to pay taxes because they can enjoy public goods and services provided by government.On the basis of theoretical analysis,this paper empirically analyzes the impact of public expenditure on tax morale.We find that the increase of public expenditure can significantly improve individual tax morale,which is mainly caused by the people’s livelihood expenditure,and fiscal maintenance expenditure significantly inhibits individual tax morale,while productive expenditure has no significant influence on tax morale.In addition,the heterogeneity analyses show public expenditure significantly improves the tax morale of employees in the private sector,but has no significant effect on the tax morale of employees in the government or stateowned enterprises and institutions.The further mechanism test indicates that trust in government is an important channel for public expenditure to enhance personal tax morale.This paper provides empirical evidence for the“tax price theory”from the perspective of tax morale,and shows that in order to promote personal tax morale and tax compliance,government should appropriately increase public expenditure and optimize the structure of public expenditure.