Residential Mobility, Externalities, and Interjurisdictional Tax Competition

Abstract

由區域間的租稅競爭所引起的無效率的地方支出水準一直被視為是一外部性問題。本文分析地方政府從事租稅競爭時，在不同的租稅體制下地方公共財的提供是否有效率。在模型中，勞動與資本皆可在區域間自由流動，土地則不可流動。因為勞動稅直接對居民課徵，在Nash均衡時，課徵額外一元租稅的邊際私人成本等於邊際社會成本，因而在勞動稅下外部性不存在，但資本稅與土地稅則不保證居民確實負擔全額的邊際成本。因此，在以效用為基礎的目標函數下，只有在勞動稅下地方公共財的提供才是有效率的。這些發現建議若中央政府禁止地方政府對資本所得與地租課稅，或許能增進地方公共財提供的效率。 The inefficiency caused by interjurisdictional tax competition has been regarded as an externality problem. This paper examines the efficient provision of local public goods under various tax regimes when jurisdictions engage in tax competition. In the model both labor and capital are freely mobile, whereas land is immobile. Since labor taxes are imposed directly on residents, in Nash equilibrium the marginal private cost of raising an additional dollar tax revenue equals the marginal social cost. Therefore, taxation of labor has no externalities. However, capital and land taxation do not ensure that residents will pay exactly the full marginal cost of local public goods. As a consequence, under utility-based objective functions, local public goods are provided efficiently only under labor taxation. These findings suggest that federal prohibitions on local capital and rental income taxation may be beneficial.