An Uneven Impact of Emerging Technologies on Taxpayers With Various Income Levels Audited by the IRS: Empirical Evidence From an AI Technology Application and Regression Models

This study aims to investigate the influence of emerging technology adoption on tax compliance, encompassing both the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) compliance audits and taxpayers’ compliance performance (collectively, tax compliance). We employed the Gradient Descent optimization algorithm, an artificial intelligence (AI) technology application, to scrutinize the connection between the quality of US tax filings and the development of emerging technology, among other contributing factors. Additionally, we utilized multiple linear regression to evaluate the relationships between dependent variables, specifically IRS audit rates and the no-change rate at different income levels,1 and several independent variables, including a proxy for emerging technology in the form of tax software. Our findings reveal that while emerging technology significantly impacts tax compliance within the IRS and taxpayers’ performance, its effects vary across income groups. Notably, emerging technology seems to confer greater advantages to higher-income individuals compared to their lower-income counterparts. These study results hold considerable policy implications for government decision-makers in promoting the adoption of emerging technology among lower-income taxpayers.

Gini Coefficients in China＇s Provincial-Level Regions during 1995-2010： Patterns and Analysis

This paper calculates the urban, rural and general Gini coefficients （hereinafter referred to as GC） of household income in 27provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions of China between 1995 and 2010 using GC calculation formulas. After calculating the GCs, this paper analyzes their trends using density function estimation in nonparametric econometrics. The results show that the GCs of household income in provincial regions tend to rise from coastal regions to inland regions. In other words, the GCs of household income in the regions tend to rise from the east to the west and they appear to be concentrated and region-specific. A discriminate analysis of economic growth and income distribution in the provincial regions by income level and GC also shows a regional characteristic, consistent with the division of eastern, central and western China and that as one analyzes household income from the east to the west, income distribution becomes more unequal and income level becomes lower.

Impact of Regional Development on Carbon Emission: Empirical Evidence Across Countries

Global warming is recently an urgent issue worldwide. The increase of carbon emissions induced by human economic activi- ties has become a major driving force behind global climate change. Thus, as a matter of social responsibility, reasonable carbon con- straints should be implemented to ensure environmental security and sustainable development for every country. Based on a summary of studies that examined the relationship between carbon emissions and regional development, this paper shows that human activity-led carbon emission is caused by the combination of several influencing factors, including population size, income level, and technical pro- gress. Thus, a quantitative model derived from IPAT-ImPACT-Kaya series and STIRPAT models was established. Empirical analysis using multivariate nonlinear regression demonstrated that the origins of growing global carbon emission included the increasing influ- encing elasticity of the population size and the declining negative effect of technical progress. Meanwhile, in context of classification of country groups at different income levels, according to the comparison of fluctuating patterns of the influencing elasticity, technical progress was found as the main factor influencing carbon emission levels in high-income countries, and population size might he the controlling factor in middle-income countries. However, for low-income countries, the nonlinear relationship between carbon emission and its influencing factors was not significant, whereas population growth was identified as an important potential driving force in future carbon emissions. This study can therefore provide a reference for the formulation of policies on carbon constraints, especially to de- velop more efficient carbon mitigating policies for countries at different income levels.

经济发展对城市宜居性的影响——基于中国40个大中城市的实证分析

Under the background that economy and urbanization of China are gradually entering the stage of high-quality development,clarifying the influence of economic development on urban livability is of significant academic and practical value.In this paper,regarded as one“factor”,livability was introduced into the research framework of production function,and a theoretical model of the impact of economic development on urban livability was established.Based on the panel data of 40 cities in China from 2005 to 2019,the System GMM,panel threshold model and other methods were further adopted to carry out an empirical analysis.The results show that:(1)The livability level of large and medium-sized cities in China from 2005 to 2019 has been rising generally,but they present obvious characteristics of dimensional and spatial differentiation.(2)In general,economic development has an inhibiting effect on the improvement of urban livability,but this logical effect shows obvious heterogeneity in different time periods and diverse city scales.This inhibitory effect is more significant for the cities before entering the new normal phase of economy,and large-scale municipalities and economically-developed provincial capitals(namely Class-A cities).(3)There are significant threshold effects in the impact of economic development on urban livability,where the threshold variables are income level and economic development.With the increase of city dwellers’income,this effect presents an inverted N-shaped nonlinear feature.When the development of economy makes the average wage of employees between 60,000and 80,000 yuan,economic development can significantly improve urban livability.Also,there is a significant single threshold inhibitory effect when economic development is taken as a threshold variable.However,its negative impact shows a law of diminishing marginal efficiency.In addition,a similar threshold effect is found in smaller-scale Class-B cities.The findings of this research can provide some insights for urban planners and policymakers in both China and vast developing countries to understand better the relationship between economic development and urban livability.Finally,according to the research findings,we proposed the corresponding policy enlightenment from both“macro guidance”and“micro action”.