Abstract
This chapter takes the forthcoming adoption of the real property tax in China as a natural social experiment, estimating the potential ability and willingness to pay the property tax by Chinese urban households and simulating the tax burden distribution and the redistribution effect of the tax under several exemption proposals. The chapter uses a publicly available survey data set to calculate ability-to-pay indexes and willingness-to-pay measures; then, based on the indexes and measures, it conducts simulations. The results show that under the tax scheme proposed by authors of this book, the broad-base, low-rate local property tax is affordable to the great majority of homeowners, that low-income families get more net benefit than high-income families, and that this tax design is horizontally and vertically equitable, thereby politically acceptable; it is also efficient and administratively feasible. We can conclude that this design will generate adequate revenue to provide public services.
This chapter is based on some earlier work of my research team: (1) Zhang, Ping and Yilin Hou (2016a) China urban residents’ ability to pay the property tax and its regional differences. Journal of Public Administration (in Chinese, Guangzhou, China) (2): 136–155. (2) Zhang, Ping and Yilin Hou (2016b) Property tax: Ability-to-pay, incidence and redistribution effects. Economic Research (12): 118–132, and (3) Zhang, Ping and Yilin Hou (2017) Chinese urban residents’ willingness to pay the property tax: A theoretical framework and simulation of different exemption proposals, working paper in Chinese.
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Notes
- 1.
See the 2016 China Household Wealth Report by the China Economic Trend Institute under the Economic Daily, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/2016-04/28/c_1118765095.htm
- 2.
See the 2015 China Citizen Life Development Report by the Social Science Survey Center of Peking University, available at http://www.china.com.cn/cppcc/2016-01/20/content_37621220.htm
- 3.
- 4.
Source: U.S. census, http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab14.xls, retrieved on August 6, 2015. Since 1960s, the homeownership rate in the U.S. has remained relatively stable. It is around 63 percent in 2015 and the highest record was 69 percent in 2005.
- 5.
See Ross and Yinger (1999) for a comprehensive review.
- 6.
More precisely, the ability to pay of property tax should be calculated as \( AT{P}^{\prime }=\frac{Y- PH}{\tau V}= ATP-1 \). Without losing generalizability and for the sake of convenience, we use ATP instead of ATP′.
- 7.
In fact, the conversion index (δ) can be further divided into the governance capacity of the local government (actual conversion index) and resident trust in government (residents’ perceived conversion index). How to measure these two subindexes is beyond the scope of this monograph. It will be dealt with in separate research.
- 8.
Detailed information of this survey can be found at http://www.isss.edu.cn/cfps/
- 9.
For detailed information on this source, see http://chfs.swufe.edu.cn
- 10.
The two survey both excluded five provinces—Inner Mongolia, Hainan, Tibet, Ningxia, and Xinjiang. Besides, CFPS did not include Qinghai and CHFS did not include Fujian.
- 11.
For example, in year 2010 the average household property tax burden in the United States was 3.25 percent of their annual income; for Canada, the average property tax payment was also around 3 percent of their income.
- 12.
We also estimated the cases of per person 10 and 50 sq m; the results show that differences in the quota per se do not affect the above conclusion. Needless to say, the exemption quota should also be localized. Here we use one uniform quota because the current per capita floor space is close between provinces.
- 13.
Source: The Most Dangerous Addiction of Them All: Entitlements. http://www.dennisprager.com/the-most-dangerous-addiction-of-them-all-entitlements/
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Hou, Y. (2019). Simulation of Tax Incidence and Redistribution Effects of the Tax Proposal. In: Development, Governance, and Real Property Tax in China. Politics and Development of Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95528-5_8
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