Capital Gains Treatment of Timber Income: Incidence and Welfare Implications
研究美国自1943年以来对木材销售收入给予资本利得优惠税率的经济影响，通过一般均衡模型量化分析该政策在整个经济中的税负归宿和福利损失。
One of the most controversial issues in the field of forest taxation involves the treatment of income from the sale of timber. Since 1943, most of this income has been treated by federal and (most) state' governments as capital gains and taxed at a much lower rate than income derived from other production activities. Such preferential capital gains treatment has been extended corporations and individuals alike, regardless of whether the timber sold was grown on privately or publicly held lands. Over the years, the preferential treatment of timber has frequently been attacked by policymakers in Congress.2 Much of the existing literature on the subject, however, has been descriptive in nature and somewhat inadequate for economic policymaking. In fact, in their 1981 report the Congress, the General Accounting Office mentions this deficiency and urges the Secretary of Agriculture (p. 37) to develop a new analytical framework and expand its analytical capability deal with tax policy. . . and related considerations as they affect . .. .the performance of the timber industry in the private sector. Proper economic policy analysis of this issue requires measuring tax incidence and welfare loss throughout the economy, which can only be done with a quantitative, general equilibrium model. This study presents the results of a quantitative analysis of the economy-wide impact of the capital gains treatment of lumber. Section II reviews the history of federal capital gains timber taxation and outlines the current con-