Tax Exempt Leasing: A Framework for Analysis
本文为公共管理者分析免税租赁提供了一个框架，指出租赁虽能降低融资成本、规避债务限制，但也会带来额外成本或风险，不能仅靠改变交易形式获益。
Tax exempt leasing, widely acclaimed as a creative means of financing capital acquisitions, has greatly increased in popularity over the past several years. Stimulated by numerous articles and seminars on the technique, the volume of leases entered into by state and local governments is probably well over $1 billion per year. I A lease is an agreement conveying the right to use property, plant or equipment, usually for specified purposes and a stated period of time.2 Leasing enables the lessee to acquire an asset for a period less than its useful life and thereby avoid a portion of the costs and risks associated with ownership. Correspondingly, however, it limits the lessee to only a portion of the benefits. Leasing can take many forms. At one end of a continuum, a lessee may acquire property, such as a rental car, for only a small fraction of its anticipated life. The lessee typically pays a charge per day that is considerably greater than the cost per day that would be incurred if the asset was owned for the entire useful life. But in return, the lessee avoids most maintenance and insurance costs, does not pay for services not needed (i.e., downtime), and is unaffected by fluctuations in the disposal price of the asset. At the other end of the continuum, a lessee may acquire property for virtually all of its useful life, have complete responsibility for maintaining the asset, bear all risks of damage or malfunction and have the right to dispose of the asset at prices reflective of current market conditions. In between are arrangements in which the lessee acquires some, but not all, of the benefits of ownership and, correspondingly, assumes some, but not all, of its costs and risks. The economic function of leasing is that it permits each party to the contract to develop a portfolio of ownership benefits, costs and risks that is appropriate to its own unique circumstances. As a party acquires more of the benefits of ownership, it must typically assume more of the costs and risks. Several publications have focused on the advantages of leasing over ownership.' The purpose of this article is to place these advantages in perspective. It is to emphasize to public administrators that the benefits of leasing are unlikely to be acquired without additional cost or risk. This article focuses on tax exempt leases, which are on that portion of the continuum in which the lease takes on many of the characteristics of a purchase/ borrow arrangement. A central theme is that a mere change in the form of a transaction is not likely to pro* A tax exempt lease is an arrangement similar in economic substance to an installment purchase. The lessor extends credit to a municipality in exchange for the right to use an asset for a period of time, during or at the end of which the lessee has the option to purchase the property less than its market value. Each payment of rent is allocated between principal and interest. The interest is tax exempt to the lessor, as if it were interest on a conventional instrument of debt. For tax purposes the lessee (the municipality) is regarded as the owner of the property. As a consequence, the lessor is not eligible for the tax benefits, such as accelerated depreciation and the investment tax credit, which are currently under attack in Congress. The objective of this paper is to provide a framework for analyzing tax exempt leases. It evaluates, and attempts to put into perspective, each of the main advantages that have been ascribed to leasing. Leasing enables a municipality to obtain funds at low interest rates by tying finance costs to the purchase of property, to offset interest costs with arbitrage earnings, to circumvent debt limitations, to avoid bond referenda, and to reduce debt issue