（这是最新一期2012.02.04《经济学人》周刊的中国经济社论，其观点与我的财新《新世纪》周刊专栏文章《房产税的学问》几乎如出一辙。在此翻译给读者，希望他山之石，可以攻玉。）

China’s Economy: Time for a property tax

中国经济：房产税适得其时

CHINA’S economy is so huge, and its significance to the world so great, that it is easy to forget the country’s property market is still in its adolescence. Two decades ago most city folk were consigned to dilapidated quarters provided by their state-owned employer. In the years since then house building has boomed and the cult of home ownership has taken a hold on the Chinese psyche. But the market has seen epic swings, and prices are now falling in many big cities.

中国的经济已经是规模宏大，举世瞩目，但是人们往往忘记她的房产市场还处在躁动的青春期。20年前，大部分的城市居民都还住在国家单位分配的简陋住宅里。这些年来，住宅市场繁荣发展，人们对拥有住宅如痴似狂。但是房产市场不乏大幅震荡，最近许多大城市的房价也开始下降。

This is having a big impact on China’s local governments. They carry out over four-fifths of the country’s public spending, but pocket only half of the taxes (see article). To help make up the difference, they rely on expropriating land from farmers and flogging it to bullish property developers. But as developers struggle, land sales are dwindling. As a result, local-government revenue is drying up. Popular resentment, meanwhile, is not. In Wukan, in the southern province of Guangdong, aggrieved villagers rose up in December against land-grabbing officials, chasing the local party chief away.

这对中国的地方政府来说影响深远。虽然他们的税务进项仅占全国税收的一半，但是却要支付全部公共支出的八成以上。为了弥补这一差额，他们往往依赖于从农民手中低价拿地，再高价转手给财大气粗的开发商们（以从中牟利）。但是现在开发商自己也困难重重，土地销售也陷入了低谷。因此，不少地方政府的税收日渐干涸。不过民众的怒火却正如火如荼。在南方省份广东的乌、坎，愤怒的村民们在去年底对这种“圈地运动”终于忍无可忍，群起反抗，赶走了本地官员。

In other parts of the world local governments raise revenues by taxing homes based on something like their market value. In China taxing property is a touchy subject. The government had tried imposing a variety of levies on the sale, size and historical cost of property, but none on the market value of homes. That changed a year ago, when Chongqing and Shanghai, two giant cities, introduced a pilot tax on some upmarket homes. The tax was largely symbolic, levied at low rates on a few thousand homes in each city. But it nonetheless set a precedent. China should now broaden that tax to as many properties as possible, in cities across the country.

在世界各地，地方政府往往以市值为税基，从居民住宅征税以充实财政。在中国，对房产征税却是个敏感话题。政府已经试着对房产的交易，面积，以及历史成本进行征税，但是对于房产的市值征税尚无先例。在一年以前，重庆和上海这两个超大型城市，开始对高端住宅进行房产征税试点。其税率过低，征税对象过少，在每地仅有数千幢房产，基本上只具有象征意义。当然这也算是开了一个先例。中国应当扩展这一税种到尽可能多的城乡各地的各类房产。

For local governments a fully fledged property tax would provide a stable source of revenue. Unlike workers or businesspeople, homes cannot up sticks and leave. A property tax raises revenue year after year, in contrast to a land lease, which can be sold only once. What’s more, such taxes allow local authorities to capture some of the value they create: as they invest in local amenities, property values rise, and so do the taxes they are able to collect.

对地方政府而言，成熟的房产税政策可以提供稳定的财政收入。与劳动者和商人不同，住宅无法择地而居。相对于一锤子买卖的买地收入，房产税的收入年复一年，源源不绝。更为重要的是，依靠这一税收，地方政府可以从他们创造的价值中获利：当他们提高福利，完善公共设施，房价就会上升，而房产税收入也自然水涨船高。

Home truths

A property tax could also temper the wild swings in China’s housing market. A recurring levy would make it costlier to buy and hold a second or third home as a speculative bet on rising prices. That would force some absentee homeowners to sell their vacant flats or rent them to the many citizens priced out of the market. Some economists believe that the light taxation of land in Japan contributed to its ruinous asset-price bubble in the 1980s.

房产税还可以对中国的狂野的房地产市场加以降温。一项持续的征税使得买第二或第三套房的房市投机者的成本增加。这会使得不少空置房主不得不把房产卖给或租给那些无力承受当前房价的居民。某些经济学家认为过于温和的土地税对日本1980年代的毁灭性的房产泡沫难逃其咎。

A property tax would by no means be easy to implement in China. It would require homes to be registered, title to be clear and the appraisal of property values to be credible. But similar obstacles have been overcome in other developing economies, including many cities in India.

在中国实施这一税种并非易事。房产需要登记，产权需要明晰，市值需要评估。不过类似的困难在其他的发展中国家，包括印度的许多城市，已经完全克服了。

Under Chairman Mao, taxes on private property all but vanished along with private property itself. Today’s Chinese set no store by the old socialist doctrine that “property is theft”. But many urban Chinese now think of taxation that way. They feel, with some justification that they already pay too much to a state that provides too little.

在毛泽东时代，对私有财产的征税随同私有财产自身都一起烟消云散了。今天的中国已经不是那个要“狠斗私字一闪念”的社会，但是不少中国的城市居民似乎对财产税并不感冒。他们觉得，他们付出太多，而这个国家付出太少。

This antipathy is not lost on China’s local governments. They are wary of angering the urban middle class, who own their own homes, and the city elites (including party officials and their families), who usually own several. So they continue to cause anger by throwing rural folk off their land. China must now act boldly to reform its taxation of property. Otherwise it will have to face the consequences of continued weak local-government finances and even more social unrest.

这种反感对于中国的地方政府来说并不意外。他们担心触怒城市的拥有住宅的中产阶级，还有包括官员及其家属在内的常常拥有多套住房的精英阶层。因此他们依然试图把农村的居民赶离其生活的土地，激起民怨。现在是大胆施行房产税的时候了。否则，地方政府的财源将要枯竭，而社会依然动荡。