经济与社会研究院SEMINAR第155期

题目：Formality Avoidance: Evidence from Notches in China's Value-Added Taxes

主讲人：袁海山, 澳大利亚昆士兰大学

时间：2019年5月14日，13:30-15:00

地点：暨南大学中惠楼106B室

主讲人简介：

Haishan Yuan joined the University of Queensland in Australia after finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2014. His primary research interests are in political economy, development economics, public economics, and applied microeconometrics. His work appears at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Economics Letters, and American Law and Economics Review.

Abstract:

Under China's value-added tax (VAT) system, firms with revenue above a certain threshold are mandated to register as a general VAT payer. Small (non-general) firms are restricted from claiming VAT credit from the input and issuing VAT invoices, but they are subject to lower tax rates. Using a novel administrative data set, we find substantial bunching just below the revenue cutoffs, which suggests that marginal firms refrain from formalizing in the VAT system by lowering their reported revenue. Among manufacturing firms, areas with a larger share of small firms exhibit a greater degree of bunching just below the registration threshold. We do not find a similar pattern for trading companies. Our results suggest that formality avoidance by small firms have important implications for the practical implementation of VAT. Moreover, network externality in VAT formalization may be particularly significant among manufacturing firms.