China’s Turn to Domestic-Led Growth: Replacing Consumption Taxes with Land Taxes?

As part of its turn towards domestic-led growth China plans to stimulate consumption, including through a reduction in consumption taxes. We compare two model-based scenarios in which the revenue losses from lower consumption taxes are replaced by higher income taxes or higher land taxes. The model is carefully calibrated to recent Chinese data, including detailed fiscal data. We find that higher income taxes lead to significant losses in output and incomes, while higher land taxes lead to significant gains. These gains are increasing in the share of land in net wealth, a statistic for which better data would be invaluable.