Book contents
- The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State
- Cambridge Tax Law
- The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Forgotten Reform
- 2 What Is an Audit?
- 3 Atomistic Coercion
- 4 Returning Responsibilities to Taxpayers
- 5 Organizing Revenue
- 6 Policy Making without Information
- 7 The Rhetoric of Law
- 8 Varieties of State Capacity
- 9 Pivoting Away from the Rule of Law
- References
- Index
6 - Policy Making without Information
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2022
- The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State
- Cambridge Tax Law
- The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Forgotten Reform
- 2 What Is an Audit?
- 3 Atomistic Coercion
- 4 Returning Responsibilities to Taxpayers
- 5 Organizing Revenue
- 6 Policy Making without Information
- 7 The Rhetoric of Law
- 8 Varieties of State Capacity
- 9 Pivoting Away from the Rule of Law
- References
- Index
Summary
The relationship between tax administration and tax policy is highly endogenous: policy decisions can directly affect the structure of tax administration, which in turn constrain subsequent policy options. Chapter 6 explore this relationship. For example, political decisions to cut the personal income tax for the rich in China directly undermined PIT administration, which in turn made it seemingly infeasible to expand the PIT. I also offer a novel explanation for the low levels of enforcement of urban employment-based social insurance (SI) schemes: conflicting incentives among the central and provincial government, not enforcement capacity, lie at the root of perennially lackluster enforcement. But the subtlest, yet most pervasive, causes of information constraints in Chinese tax policy are the structures of relentless delegation and governance through atomistic coercion. In the largest sphere of Chinese taxation—business taxation—information bottlenecks imply that considerations of economic efficiency are rarely applied. Instead, raising or reducing the overall level of taxes is the chief policy lever. This introduces tremendous instability to the fiscal system.
Keywords
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- The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State , pp. 178 - 201Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022