The Evaluation of Local Fiscal Capacity Index in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Chuang, Ya-Hui, 莊雅慧
• Other Authors: Lin, Kung-Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/00949223080535392161

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 財政學系 === 101 === 　　Taiwan local governmental financial situation became worse because of the low own financial resources, the rigidity and continuous expansion of expenditure, and rapidly accumulated debt burden. The deterioration of local finance seriously affected the effectiveness of local government performance. For the purpose of constructing the self-responsible spirit of local finance and establishing a better intergovernmental transfer system, the central government sincerely considers to including the performance index of local fiscal capacity and effort into the evaluation of transfer grant and the allocation of unified distribution tax. However, due to the lack of researches in completely evaluating Taiwan local governmental performance in fiscal capacity and effort, the main purpose of this study is to completely evaluating local governmental performance in terms of fiscal capacity and effort index of municipalities and counties (cities) in Taiwan by employing three measurement methods proposed by The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relation (ACIR). These three methods include the Representative Tax System (RTS), the Representative Revenue System (RRS), and the Representative Expenditure System (RES). So far, it is known that this study is the first study to use RRS and RES methods to empirically estimate Taiwan local governmental fiscal capacity and effort. It is hoped that the overall index estimation of Taiwan local fiscal capacity and effort can serve as a policy reference for the central government in establishing intergovernmental transfer system. 　　The estimated results show that metropolitan counties (cities) have better index of tax capacity and revenue capacity, whereas agricultural counties have reverse index. However, there is no significant trend among counties (cities) for tax effort. Local governments can increase 30% potential revenue if non-tax revenue is considered. It shows that the counties (cities) with bad tax capacity performance can improve their revenue by seeking non-tax revenue sources. Based on RES, eastern and agricultural counties (cities) represent higher demand for expenditure per capita, but there is no correspondent revenue for the need. 　　We should consider all the advantages of every index in policy making. For ex-ample, if RRS and RES index are considered together in making unified distribution tax policy, the local governments would not abuse the expenses and save unnecessary spending. Therefore, it can improve the motivation and raise the self-responsible attitude for local governments to finance their need from own revenue resources.