The Window Tax: A Tale of Excess Burden
窗户税：税收超额负担的一个案例
For economists, the “excess burden” of a tax refers to the idea that the cost of a tax isn’t just the amount of money collected–it’s also the ways in which taxpayers alter their behavior because the tax has changed their incentives. A moderately well-known classroom and textbook example is the “window tax,” first imposed in England in 1696 by King William III, and not definitively repealed until 1851. The excess burden of the window tax was that lower-income people ended up living in rooms with few or no windows.
经济学家用税收“超额负担”指称这样一种概念：纳税的成本并不只在于所缴税费的数额——还在于纳税人受缴税影响而做出的行为改变。一个大家比较熟知的例子，就是课堂上常提到的“窗户税”。该税从1696年在威廉三世命令下开征，直到1851年才彻底消失。这里的超额负担在于，低收入人群就此选择生活在很少或没有窗户的房间里。
Wallace E. Oates and Robert M. Schwab review the history of the window tax and provide actual estimates of how it affected the number of windows per house in their article, “The Window Tax: A Case Study in Excess Burden,” which appeared in the Winter 2015 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives (where I have toiled in the fields as Managing Editor since 1987).
Wallace E. Oates 和Robert M. Schwab在《经济展望杂志》（2015/冬）的《窗户税：超额负担之案例分析》一文中回顾了窗户税历史，并给出了其影响家庭平均窗户数的估测值（我自1987年起担任杂志总编）。
The article popped back into my mind earlier this week when I learned that Oates, a highly distinguished economist based at the University of Maryland since 1979, died last week. One of Oates’s specialties was the area of local public finance, and his 1972 book on Fiscal Federalism, is a classic of that subfield.
前几天，我听说Oates已于上周去世，心里不禁又浮现起这篇文章。这位卓越的经济学家自1979年起一直任教于马里兰大学。他擅长的领域之一是地方公共财政，其1972年出版的《财政联邦主义》正是这一领域中的经典。
Here are some facts about the historical window tax, courtesy of Oates and Schwab.
下面引用Oates与Schwab写到的一些历史。
- William III intended it as a temporary tax, just to help out with the overhang of costs from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the most recent war with France. But it ended up lasting 150 years.
- 威廉三世原本只是为了摆脱1688年光荣革命和上一次英法战争带来的财务超支而暂时实行窗户税，不料它最后却延续了150年。
- “An important feature of the tax was that it was levied on the occupant, not the owner of the dwelling. Thus, the renter, not the landlord, paid the tax. However, large tenement buildings in the cities, each with several apartments, were an exception. They were charged as single residences with the tax liability resting on the landlord. This led to especially wretched conditions for the poor in the cities, as landlords blocked up windows and constructed tenements without adequate light and ventilation …”
- “该税的一个重要特征是：征收对象是住户而非房产所有者。因此，纳税人是租户而非房东。不过城区多套房公寓楼是例外。收税官将多套间整体看做单元住宅向房东征税。这就使得城市贫民的生活状况非常悲惨，因为房东们会把窗户封起来，所修套间的光照和通风都不足……”
- The window tax was thought of as improvement on the “hearth tax,” that Charles II had imposed in 1662. “The tax was very unpopular in part because of the intrusive character of the assessment process. The `chimney-men’ (as the assessors and tax collectors were called) had to enter the house to count the number of hearths and stoves, and there was great resentment against this invasion of the sanctity of the home. The window tax, in contrast, did not require access to the interior of the dwelling: the “window peepers” could count windows from the outside, thus simplifying the assessment procedure and obviating the need for an invasion of the interior.”
- 窗户税是被当作“炉灶税”的一个改良版本而提出来的，后者由查理二世于1662年开征。“炉灶税极度招人厌，部分原因在于评估过程的侵犯性。‘烟囱工’（当时对估税员和收税员的称呼）必须进到房间里面数壁炉和火炉的数目。对于这种侵犯产权神圣性的做法，人们怨声载道。与之相比，窗户税则不需要进入住所内部：‘窥窗工’从外头就可以数清窗户数目，从而简化了评估程序，无需再闯进房内。”
- The window tax was intended as a visible measure of ability to pay: that is, a high-income person would live in a place with more windows than a low-income person. But at the time, it was widely recognized that windows were a very imperfect proxy for wealth. Adam Smith wrote about this problem of window tax in 1776 in The Wealth of Nations: “A house of ten pounds rent in the country may have more windows than a house of five hundred pounds rent in London; and though the inhabitant of the former is likely to be a much poorer man than that of the latter, yet so far as his contribution is regulated by the window-tax, he must contribute more to the support of the state.”
- 窗户税的本意是用有形的手段判断有支付能力的人：即高收入者所住之处的窗户多过低收入者。但在当时，普遍认为，拿窗户作为财富的表征并不十分完善。亚当·斯密1776年在《国富论》中就窗户税的这一问题写道：“乡间10镑租金的房屋，有时比伦敦500镑租金房屋的窗户还要多。前者的住户比后者的住户通常要穷得多，但尽管如此，只要是由窗户税来规定捐额，前者就得贡献更多金钱以支援国家。”
- When the rates on the window tax went up, it was common for owners of homes and apartments to block or build over many or all of their windows. The results on human well-being were severe. “A series of studies by physicians and others found that the unsanitary conditions resulting from the lack of proper ventilation and fresh air encouraged the propagation of numerous diseases such as dysentery, gangrene, and typhus. … A series of petitions to Parliament resulted in the designation of commissioners and committees to study the problems of the window tax in the first half of the 19th century. In 1846, medical officers petitioned Parliament for the abolition of the window tax, pronouncing it to be `most injurious to the health, welfare, property, and industry of the poor, and of the community at large’.”
- 一旦窗户税的税率上涨，宅子和公寓的所有者定会大量甚或全部封堵或筑死其窗户。人的福祉受到严重影响。“医疗工作者和其他许多人所做的一系列研究发现，缺乏适当通风和新鲜空气的不卫生环境，助长了如痢疾、坏疽和斑疹伤寒等众多疾病的蔓延……议会收到大量请愿书。于是在19世纪上半叶，众多专员和委员会得以受指派着手研究窗户税的问题。1846年，卫生部门官员向议会申请废除窗户税，称其‘对于贫民及整个社群的卫生、福祉、产权和勤勉极其有害’。”
- Here’s Charles Dickens writing in 1850 about the window tax in Household Words, a magazine that he published for a number of years: “The adage ‘free as air’ has become obsolete by Act of Parliament. Neither air nor light have been free since the imposition of the window-tax. We are obliged to pay for what nature lavishly supplies to all, at so much per window per year; and the poor who cannot afford the expense are stinted in two of the most urgent necessities of life.”
- 1850年，查尔斯·狄更斯在他多年主持出版的杂志《家常话》中如此描写道：“‘像空气一样自由’这条谚语已经因议会而过时。自窗户税开征后，无论是空气还是光线都不曾免费过【译注：“自由”与“免费”的英文都是free】。我们被迫为大自然慷慨的恩赐付费，只要时间、窗户还在，而无法承担这笔开支的穷人，只能在这两样至关紧要的生活必需品上节约。” Oates and Schwab work with a mix of data on the number of windows in a sample of houses in Shropshire and economic theory about household behavior when confronted with taxes to generate an admittedly rough estimate that on average, collecting a certain amount of money through the window tax created an excess burden–in terms of the costs of living in a place with fewer windows–equal to an additional 62% of the value of the tax.
Oates和Schwab将什普罗郡样本住宅的窗户数据和面对个税居民行为经济理论结合起来，得出一个粗略的估计：整体说来，因窗户税那笔钱产生的超额负担——就人们选择住在窗户较少的住所这一行为成本而言——相当于税赋的62%。
Oates and Schwab ask why the window tax lasted so long, give its many problems, and offer an appropriately cynical answer: “Perhaps the lesson here is that when governments need to raise significant revenue, even a very bad tax can survive for a very long time.”
既然窗户税问题如此之多，Oates和Schwab就追问为何它能持续如此之久。他们给出的回答是一种恰到好处的冷嘲：“也许，此处的教益就是，如果政府需要显著增加收入，那么即便是极为恶性的税种也能存活很长一段时间。”
I didn’t know Oates personally, but I had one other job-related interaction with him back. Along with his work in local public finance, Oates was also well-known as an environmental economist. His 1975 book, The Theory of Environmental Policy (written with William Baumol) was highly influential in setting the direction of what at the time was a fairly new and growing field.
我私下里和Oates并无深交，但之前曾因工作关系和他有过另外一次互动。除了在地方公共财政领域的成绩以外，Oates还以环境经济学家的身份知名。他1975年的著作《环境经济理论与政策设计》（与William Baumol合著）影响极大，为当时这个相当年轻、正在成长的领域设定了方向。
In 1995, Oates was a co-author in one of the most downloaded and cited exchanges the JEP has ever published on the subject of what is sometimes called the “Porter hypothesis.”
1995年，以人称的“波特假说”为主题，Oates与人合作，为《经济学展望杂志》写了一篇文章，成为该刊史上下载和引用得最多的文章之一。
Michael Porter made the argument–bolstered by a large number of case studies, that when environmental goals are set in a strict way, but firms are allowed flexibility in how to achieve those goals in the context of a competitive market environment, firms often become quite innovative in meeting those environmental goals.
以大量案例研究为支撑，迈克尔·波特提出了如下论点：当环境目标被严格设定且企业在竞争中可以灵活发挥时，企业为达成这些目标通常会变得富有创造性。
Indeed, Porter argued that in a substantial number of cases, the innovations induced by the tough new environmental rules save enough money so that the rules end up imposing no economic costs at all. In the Fall 1995 Journal of Economic Perspectives, Michael E. Porter and Claas van der Linde make their case in “Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship,” (9:4, 97-118).
事实上，波特认为，在相当多的案例中，由严厉的环保新规所引发的创新能够省出足够的款项，使得这些规定最终不增加任何经济成本。在《经济展望杂志》1995/秋，波特和Claas van der Linde通过《环境/竞争力关系新概念一探》（9:4, 97-118）一文对此作了论述。
The authorial team of Karen Palmer, Wallace E. Oates, and Paul R. Portney respond in “Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit-Cost or the No-Cost Paradigm?” (9:4, 119-132). Oates and his co-authors took the position that while the costs of complying with environmental regulations do often turn out to be lower than industry predictions that were made when the rule was under discussion, it goes too far to say that environmental rules usually or generally don’t impose costs. I wrote about some more recent evidence on this dispute in “Environmental Protection and Productivity Growth: Seeking the Tradeoff” (January 8, 2015).
Karen Palmer、Wallace E. Oates和Paul R. Portney用《强化环保标准：收益/成本范式还是零成本范式？》（9:4, 119-132）一文做出回应。Oates和共同作者们的立场是：尽管遵守环保规制的成本最终总会低于起初制定时的业界预测，但却不能说它往往或一般情形下不会增加成本。我曾就此讨论提供了一些最新佐证，见《环境保护与生产率增长：寻找权衡》一文（2015-01-08）
翻译：沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对：龙泉(@L_Stellar)
二校：慕白(@李凤阳他说)
编辑：辉格@whigzhou