浅碎花的重生小说:毫无意义的管制：带来的只能是一团糟

一家典型的刚果公司，如果毛利率是20%，那么要上缴的税将高达利润的340%。一些侥幸存活下来的公司只能给税务员塞些刚果法郎以求他们能放过一马。对于税务员，这当然不错了；但对国家来说，恐怕就不这样了。企业精神自始就被这些荒谬的规定扼杀了。

Every year since 2003 the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank) has compiled a report on red tape around the world. “Doing Business 2012”, which was published on October 20th, reports progress on several fronts.

自2003年起，国际金融公司（世界银行的一个机构）每年都会编撰报告以点评世界各国的官僚作风。在前几期的基础上，《营商环境报告2012》于10月20号出版，报告了这方面的最新动态。

“Doing Business” does not delve into complicated areas full of tricky trade-offs, such as regulating banks or environmental pollution. Rather, it looks at rules that ought to be simple but often aren’t. How long, for example, does it take to register a company? In New Zealand it takes one day and costs 0.4% of the local annual income per head. In Congo it takes 65 days, involves ten steps and costs 551% of income per head.

《营商环境报告》并不对如银行业管理和环境保护等复杂和要求高超平衡技巧的领域进行深究，而是着眼于那些应该简单而往往并非如此的规章制度。比如，需要多久才能注册一个公司？在新西兰，只需一天的功夫，花费当地人均年收入的0.4%就可以了；而在刚果，你需要花费65天，历经十个步骤，费用更是高达当地人均年收入的551%。

In Kenya, by no means the most bureaucratic state in Africa, firms that register incur an annual secretarial fee of $220, plus more for lawyers’ bills. This discourages small firms from becoming formal, which means they can’t borrow money from a bank. Those that register find the paperwork labyrinthine and confusing. “We found it was very hard to see what was ahead of us,” says Alix Grubel, a director of Kenya Buzz, a digital publisher.

而即便在肯尼亚，这个非洲大陆上绝不可能是最官僚主义的国家，那些注册的公司每年要花费220美元的手续费，这还没算上律师的费用。这就使得小企业难以变得正规，这也意味着他们没法从银行借钱。而那些注册的公司则发现那些文书像迷宫一样让人困惑。一个数字出版公司Kenya Buzz的高管阿历克斯·格鲁贝尔说，我们发现很难弄清楚未来还有什么。

Other procedures the IFC measures include registering a property (which takes one day in Portugal, 513 in Kiribati); obtaining a construction permit (five steps in Denmark, 51 in Russia); enforcing a simple contract through the courts (150 days in Singapore, 1,420 in India); and winding up an insolvent firm (creditors in Japan recover 92.7 cents on the dollar, those in Chad get nothing at all).

纳入IFC考量的其他程序还有财产登记（葡萄牙1天就行，基里巴斯要513天）；获得建设许可（丹麦要5个步骤，俄罗斯则要51个）；通过法院执行一个简单的合同（新加坡要150天，印度则要1420天）；资不抵债的公司破产清算（日本的债务人每一美元可得清偿92.7美分，在乍得，一个子儿都没有）。

Although the IFC has not been publishing red-tape league tables for long, it has already shamed most of the world’s governments into cutting a few pointless rules (see chart). In the past six years, 94% of the 174 economies surveyed have streamlined at least some processes. In the past year alone, 125 countries implemented reforms. Globally, the average time it takes to register a business has fallen from 50 days to 31 since 2003, and the average cost from 89% of per capita income to 36%. Until recently in Paraguay, companies were obliged to have every page of their accounts stamped with a judge’s seal. No longer.

尽管IFC出版这份官僚主义排行榜时间还不长，但已令世界多数国家感到羞愧，并削减了一些毫无意义的规定。在过去六年间，列入调查名单的174个国家中，94%都好歹取得了一些进步。仅就去年来说，就有125个国家实施了改革。从全球来看，注册一个企业所需的平均时间已从2003年的50天下将到了31天，而所需费用也从人均年收入的89%下降到了36%。直到最近，巴拉圭的企业都还需要在每页帐册上都盖上一个法官的印章，这种情况怕是再也不会有了。

Cutting red tape makes countries richer, if the 873 peer-reviewed articles and 2,332 working papers that use the “Doing Business” data are anything to go by. A study in Mexico found that simplified municipal licensing led to a 5% increase in the number of registered companies and a 2.2% increase in jobs. It also lowered prices for consumers. Bankruptcy reform in Brazil caused the cost of credit to fall by 22%. Countries with flexible labour rules saw real output rise by 17.8% more than those with rigid ones.

依据那些引用《营商环境报告》的873篇同行审阅的学术论文和2332篇工作论文，减少这些繁文缛节会使国家更富裕。墨西哥的一项研究发现，简化的市政许可会带来注册公司5%的增长，并带来2.2%的工作岗位增加。这还将降低消费者的支出。巴西的破产改革使信贷费用降低了22%。用工制度灵活的国家实际产出比那些用户制度僵化的国家高17.8%。

And you do not have to be a tea-party fan to agree that some corporate tax rates are too high. To compare apples with apples, the IFC looked at how each country would tax a domestically owned ceramics firm with 60 employees, two plots of land and a pre-tax profit margin of 20%. Five countries (Sri Lanka, Argentina, the Comoros Islands, the Gambia and Congo) would hit such a firm with taxes exceeding 100% of its profits. This is of course self-defeating. When taxes are too high, no one pays them. Bolivia, for example, tries to grab 80% of a firm’s profits but ends up raising far less, as a proportion of GDP, than low-tax Chile, which accordingly has much better roads, schools and public health care.

不必是一个茶党的拥护者，你都会同意有些国家的公司税率太高了。IFC考察每个国家对一个有两块土地、税前利润率为20%、员工60人的内资陶瓷企业如何征税。五个国家（斯里兰卡、阿根廷、科摩罗群岛、冈比亚和刚果）向这家公司收取的税额将超过其利润的100%。这显然会适得其反。若税收过高，没有人会缴纳。例如，玻利维亚试图征收公司利润的80%，但收取的税以GDP的比例来衡量还低于实行低税率的智利，而相应地，后者拥有好得多的道路、学校和公共卫生。

This year’s report adds two new measures. One is electricity. A young entrepreneur in Liberia who builds a new warehouse must wait on average 586 days to connect it to the power grid. In Ukraine it takes 274 days; in Germany only 17. Guess which of these countries has a thriving manufacturing sector?

今年的报告还增加了两个衡量标准。一个是电力。一个利比里亚的年轻企业家需要586天才能给新建的仓库通电，在乌克兰需要274天，而在德国只需要17天。你说，那个国家的制造业更发达？

The other new measure is transparency. How easy is it to find out what the rules are, how to comply with them and what it will cost? In most countries in Africa and the Middle East, a businessperson must meet an official face-to-face to discover such things. In more business-friendly places, it is all published online. This not only reduces hassles; it also reduces costs. Where fees are transparent, they tend to be lower. In countries where it is easy to find the documents required to import goods, it takes 21 days on average to import them; in countries where such forms are hidden in a bureaucrat’s desk, it takes twice as long.

另一个衡量标准是透明度。怎样才能找些这些规章制度？如何才算遵照执行？需要花费多少？在非洲和中东的大多数国家，商人们必须亲自与官员会面才能搞清楚这些东西。而在那些商业友好的地区，这些内容网上都有。这不仅减少了麻烦，还降低了费用。而那些费用透明的地区，花费往往也较低。在那些能轻松找到进口货物所需文档的国家，货物进口平均只需要21天；而在这些文件淹没于的官僚主义书桌的那些国家，要花费两倍的时间。

The IFC singles out several countries for plaudits. Morocco, Moldova and Macedonia improved the most in the past year. South Korea has “sunsetted” more than 600 regulations and 3,500 administrative rules since 2008. Song Yae-ri, the founder of Seoulist, a website that publishes reviews of the hottest food and coolest bars in Seoul, says it was easy to register her firm. “All it took was a trip to the tax office, where I filled out an A4 sheet of paper. It took five minutes,” she says.

IFC还特别称赞了几个国家。摩洛哥、摩尔多瓦和马其顿在过去这些年改进最多。韩国自2008年已取消了超过600份规章和3500份行政规定。Song Yae-ri是首尔一家评论热门食物和酒吧的网站Seoulist的创办人，她说，注册一家公司很容易，你所要做的就是跑一趟税务局。我就在那里填写了一份A4的纸，只消5分钟就行了。

In Kenya, by contrast, many businesses feel they have no choice but to employ a “consultant” to wait in queues and, ahem, deal with awkward officials. Others keep a low profile to avoid the predatory state. Honey Care, a Kenyan firm that sells bee hives to farmers and buys back the honey, finds it can avoid red tape by operating out in the countryside, far from the nearest bureaucrat. The downside is that there are hardly any roads.

相比之下，在肯尼亚，许多企业主觉得他们别无他法只能雇个“顾问”来排队，对付那些打着官腔爱刁难人的官员。其他一些人则保持低调，以免招惹这个捕食国家。Honey Care是肯尼亚一家向农民出售蜂箱并回收蜂蜜的公司，它发现在在远离政府机构的乡下经营公司就可以避免官僚主义的侵害。不利的一面是那里几乎没有道路。

Rich countries score better than poor ones on the IFC’s measures, with Singapore pipping Hong Kong to the top slot (see chart), but there is no room for complacency. America comes fourth, yet in the past year it enacted no reforms at all in the areas “Doing Business” measures. Its tax code is as simple to understand as a thesis on post-structuralism translated into Klingon. And some American states insist on costly licences for florists, interior designers and barbers. Now there’s a rule that needs trimming.

根据IFC的衡量标准，富国表现好于穷国。新加坡击败香港夺得首位，但恐怕也无法自满。美国列第四，在去年它在所有的衡量标准上都没有进行改革。它的免税代码就好像由后结构主义的论文翻译而成的外星文一样难懂。美国一些州仍坚持对花匠、室内设计师和理发师进行许可，这些规定怕是需要裁减了。