Reforming regulation: A proposal to end unsound cost-benefit analysis requirements for tax and transfer rules

A partnership between The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and the Tax Law Center at NYU Law

布鲁金斯学会汉密尔顿项目与纽约大学法学院税法中心之间的合作伙伴关系

Since the early 1980s, the White House has required federal agencies to conduct a formal cost-benefit analysis for most economically significant regulations.

自 20 世纪 80 年代初以来，白宫一直要求联邦机构对大多数具有经济意义的法规进行正式的成本效益分析。

For rules where its conventions make sense (for example, many environmental regulations), cost-benefit analysis can inform policymakers and the public about the likely effects of a regulation and help guide policymakers to better decisions.

对于其惯例有意义的规则（例如，许多环境法规），成本效益分析可以让政策制定者和公众了解法规可能产生的影响，并帮助指导政策制定者做出更好的决策。

But for some major categories of regulations, the conventions of formal cost-benefit analysis do not make sense.

但对于某些主要类别的法规，正式成本效益分析的惯例没有意义。

One such category is tax rules and rules addressing transfer programs such as Social Security or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

其中一类是税收规则和涉及社会保障或补充营养援助计划（SNAP）等转移计划的规则。

Mandating formal cost-benefit analysis for these “transfer rules” undermines effective regulatory policymaking.

强制对这些“转移规则”进行正式的成本效益分析会破坏有效的监管政策制定。

First, the analysis biases the regulatory process against revenue-raising and redistributive policies that move resources from those with more to those with less.

首先，该分析使监管过程偏向于反对收入增加和再分配政策，这些政策将资源从资源较多的国家转移到资源较少的国家。

Second, it often provides critics with easy but misleading means of attacking the rules and has the potential to create vulnerabilities in court.

其次，它常常为批评者提供了攻击规则的简单但具有误导性的手段，并有可能在法庭上造成漏洞。

Finally, requiring that agencies do cost-benefit analysis—and requiring that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) review the analysis—delays the rulemaking process and wastes agency and OIRA resources, without producing useful policy guidance.

最后，要求各机构进行成本效益分析，并要求信息和监管事务办公室 (OIRA) 审查分析结果，会延迟规则制定过程，浪费机构和 OIRA 资源，而不会产生有用的政策指导。

Formal cost-benefit analysis is not useful when applied to transfer rules because it ignores the distributional and fiscal goals that motivate them—mainly, redistributing resources among individuals and increasing or decreasing deficits.

正式的成本效益分析在应用于转移支付规则时并没有什么用处，因为它忽略了激励这些规则的分配和财政目标——主要是在个人之间重新分配资源以及增加或减少赤字。

Instead, formal cost-benefit analysis views transfers—including transfers between individuals and the government, such as tax payments or Social Security benefits—as a wash: The offsetting gain and loss to different groups or entities cancel each other out.

相反，正式的成本效益分析将转移（包括个人与政府之间的转移，例如纳税或社会保障福利）视为一种清洗：不同群体或实体的抵消收益和损失相互抵消。

Economic analysis of transfer rules can be useful precisely because it can help policymakers judge whether the costs imposed by such rules are worth it, but it makes no sense to do regulatory analysis in a framework that sets aside the transfers that are the reason for the rule in the first place.

对转移规则的经济分析之所以有用，正是因为它可以帮助政策制定者判断这些规则所施加的成本是否值得，但在一个框架中进行监管分析是没有意义的，因为转移首先是规则的原因。

Because the primary effects of the rules are zeroed out, compliance and administrative costs will usually mean that formal cost-benefit analysis finds regulations that expand transfers or increase revenues have costs exceeding their benefits.

由于规则的主要影响被归零，合规和管理成本通常意味着正式的成本效益分析发现扩大转移或增加收入的法规的成本超过其收益。

For example, in 2024, the U.S. Treasury announced a series of actions to combat a tax avoidance strategy used by certain large partnerships, with estimated revenue gains of over $100 billion over a decade.

例如，2024年，美国财政部宣布了一系列行动，打击某些大型合伙企业使用的避税策略，预计十年内收入增长超过1000亿美元。

When the Trump administration subsequently moved to reverse one part of that initiative, the cost-benefit analysis for its proposed rule concluded that its only economic effect would be to reduce compliance costs for businesses by $163 million.

当特朗普政府随后撤销该举措的一部分时，对其拟议规则的成本效益分析得出的结论是，其唯一的经济影响将是减少企业的合规成本 1.63 亿美元。

In their words, “The Treasury Department and the IRS do not anticipate any other material economic effects of the [regulation] beyond the filing burden reduction.” In a traditional cost-benefit framework, the $163 million is a cost, but tax revenues are a disregarded transfer.

用他们的话来说，“财政部和国税局预计，除了减少申报负担之外，该法规不会产生任何其他重大经济影响。”在传统的成本效益框架中，1.63 亿美元是一项成本，但税收收入是一项被忽视的转移。

Transfer rules account for a large share of rules subject to OIRA review—roughly half for the period from 2002 to 2023—and thus for a large share of the OIRA and agency resources dedicated to producing cost-benefit analyses.

转移规则在接受 OIRA 审查的规则中占很大比例（2002 年至 2023 年期间大约一半），因此在 OIRA 和专门用于进行成本效益分析的机构资源中也占很大比例。

Tax regulations were exempted from OIRA review for most of the past 40-plus years, but that exemption was revoked during both the first and second terms of the Trump administration.

在过去 40 多年的大部分时间里，税收法规都免于 OIRA 审查，但这一豁免在特朗普政府第一届和第二届任期内都被撤销。

During the period from 2018 to 2023, when most tax rules were subject to a requirement for cost-benefit analysis, tax rules accounted for 11 percent of transfer rules and 6 percent of all rules.

2018年至2023年期间，大多数税收规则都需要进行成本效益分析，税收规则占转移规则的11%，占所有规则的6%。

Greg Leiserson (Tax Law Center at NYU Law) proposes to eliminate both the requirement for cost-benefit analysis of transfer rules and substantive review of transfer rules by OIRA.

Greg Leiserson（纽约大学法学院税法中心）建议取消 OIRA 对转让规则进行成本效益分析和对转让规则进行实质性审查的要求。

Specifically, he recommends restoring the longstanding exemption for tax rules; creating parallel exemptions for regulations related to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, and SNAP; and allowing agencies to identify other transfer rules to exempt on a rule-by-rule basis.

具体来说，他建议恢复长期以来的税收豁免规则；为与社会保障、医疗保险、医疗补助、平价医疗法案 (ACA) 市场和 SNAP 相关的法规制定并行豁免；并允许各机构确定其他转让规则，以便逐条豁免。

Under the proposal, agencies would continue to conduct and publish analysis as part of the rulemaking process but would use their judgment about what analysis is most appropriate to inform (and document) reasoned decisionmaking.

根据该提案，各机构将继续进行和发布分析，作为规则制定过程的一部分，但将根据自己的判断来判断哪种分析最适合为合理的决策提供信息（和记录）。

OIRA would continue to fulfill its statutory responsibilities with respect to transfer rules and could coordinate appropriate review by the White House and other relevant agencies, but it would have no formal clearance role and would not be responsible for approving rules for publication.

OIRA 将继续履行其在转让规则方面的法定职责，并可以协调白宫和其他相关机构的适当审查，但它不会发挥正式的审批作用，也不负责批准发布规则。

No legislation is required to implement the proposal; it could be adopted administratively.

实施该提案无需立法；可以通过行政方式予以通过。

An alternative approach would be to revise OIRA’s guidance for agencies to require a more useful alternative analysis for transfer rules.

另一种方法是修改 OIRA 对各机构的指导，要求对转移规则进行更有用的替代分析。

Indeed, the Biden administration committed substantial intellectual and staff resources to revising that guidance.

事实上，拜登政府投入了大量的智力和人力资源来修改该指导方针。

However, while the updated guidance was a significant improvement, it did not resolve the fundamental challenges of valuing the distributional and fiscal impacts of transfer rules.

然而，虽然更新后的指导意见是一个重大改进，但它并没有解决评估转移规则的分配和财政影响的根本挑战。

Leiserson argues that his proposal would both streamline and accelerate rulemaking and improve the quality of the rulemaking process by eliminating a type of analysis that is at best useless and often prejudicial for transfer rules.

莱瑟森认为，他的提议将通过消除一种最多无用且往往对转会规则不利的分析来简化和加速规则制定，并提高规则制定过程的质量。