The James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series
presents
Wei Cui
University of British Columbia School of Law
Information Reporting and State Capacity
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
12:30 – 2:00
Solarium (room FA2)
84 Queen’s Park
A prominent strand of recent economic research hypothesizes that information reporting is essential to the capacity of modern states to collect tax revenue. In this paper I critically examine both the theoretical models and the empirical evidence that have emerged surrounding this hypothesis, and argue for two contrary conclusions: first, the use of information reporting has strong limitations even in developed countries, both in the income tax and VAT contexts; second, the use of information reporting and withholding does not mark major differences in the tax capacity of developed and developing countries. Therefore portraying the task of building state fiscal capacity as chiefly about reducing the information asymmetry between taxpayers and the government is unwarranted.
Wei Cui’s research interests include tax law and policy, law and development, law and economics, and Chinese law and political economy. He was the L. Bates Lea China Exchange Professor at the University of Michigan Law School in 2015, and has held visiting professorships at the law schools of Northwestern, Columbia, and Melbourne Universities, among other institutions. He has also served as a consultant to the United Nations, the Budgetary Affairs Commission of China’s National People’s Congress, and China’s Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation. Professor Cui has had extensive practical experience in both U.S. and Chinese tax law. Between 2009 and 2010, he served as Senior Tax Counsel for the China Investment Corporation. His recent and forthcoming publications include Value Added Tax: A Comparative Approach (2nd ed, with A. Schenk and V. Thuronyi, CUP 2015); “Taxing State-Owned Enterprises: Understanding a Basic Institution of State Capitalism,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal (2015); “The Inefficiencies of Legislative Centralization: Evidence from Chinese Provincial Tax Rate Setting” (with Z. Wang), China: An International Journal (2015); “Minimalism about Source and Residence,” Michigan Journal of International Law (forthcoming); and “The Legal Maladies of ‘Federalism, Chinese-Style’,” in Weitseng Chen (ed.) The Beijing Consensus? How China Has Changed the Western Ideas of Law and Economic Development and Global Legal Practices (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
A light lunch will be served.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
