The Empirical Analysis of Local Government Fiscal Effort and its Determinants in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chien-Ju Lin, 林倩如
• Other Authors: Ming-Hung Yao
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/24530096143311591593

碩士 === 國立高雄應用科技大學 === 財富與稅務管理研究所碩士在職專班 === 101 === 　　Taiwan government passed the "Local Tax Regulations" and "Charge and Fees Act" in 2002. The local governments are authorized to exploit their own-source revenues and supposed to rely less on central government. However, the local governments still frequently request for more centrally-allotted tax revenues and subsidies. The purpose of this study is to employ the “tax handles” approach created by IMF to estimate fiscal capacity and fiscal effort indexes of 23 cities and counties in Taiwan during the period from 2001 to 2010. Also, we use panel data estimation to investigate variables that might affect the local government fiscal effort indexes. 　　According to our empirical results, there are high disparities on fiscal capacity indexes among local governments. Most local governments show poor fiscal efforts. Besides, the fiscal efforts are not match with fiscal capacities. The results also show the centrally-allotted tax revenues, subsidies and election year are significantly negatively related to fiscal efforts. Meanwhile, per capita public spending, non-tax revenues and dependence on debt are significantly positively related to fiscal efforts. Populations and rule party have no impact on fiscal efforts. The findings of this study show that fiscal autonomy is not fully enforced in Taiwan because most local governments tend not to exploit their revenue-raising potential. In order to stimulate the fiscal effort, this study suggests the government create consistent and comprehensive measurement of fiscal capacity and effort for public policy.