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The "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" proposes a target of reducing the total discharge of major pollutants by 10% by the year 2010, equivalent to a reduction of 2% per year. However, the emission reduction task in 2006 could not be completed; in the first three quarters of 2007, the nation’s total discharge of major pollutants finally saw an inflection point. Although the first two pairs both declined, the current environmental situation in China is still grave and the discharge of major pollutants has significantly exceeded. Environmental capacity.
In this regard, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) believe that after careful investigation and study, China is actually lacking a tax type, that is, a special type of tax, environmental taxes, on the behavior of pollution and environmental destruction or product levy. The absence of environmental taxes not only limits the regulation and control of taxation and even the destruction of environmental behavior, but also makes it difficult to form a tax revenue source that is specifically designed for environmental protection.
According to the analysis of the committee members, the existing product pricing mechanism in China is not conducive to environmental protection. This price mechanism only considers the production cost of the product, but does not "internalize" the external costs such as resources and environment. Therefore, it is impossible to truly reflect the resources and environmental costs of economic growth, to change the behavior of producers and consumers to damage the environment, and to encourage people to govern the environment. Coupled with the strong demand in the domestic market, product prices continue to rise, resulting in more intense internal forces such as chlor-alkali, calcium carbide, coke and other "two high and one capital" industries to accelerate growth. In addition, the current price mechanism has also led some foreign companies that produce polluting products to enter China. They have both evaded their tax burden and transferred pollution to China.
At the same time, China's existing tax incentives related to environmental protection are relatively single, mainly limited to tax cuts and tax exemptions. Such "subtraction" not only aggravates the tax burden of the main body, but also has a limited effect due to its narrow regulatory surface and insufficient efforts. In particular, the current sewage charging system in our country has been plagued with serious problems and urgently needed reforms. For example, lack of mandatory, it is difficult to collect, consultation fees are a common phenomenon, the local protectionism in the charging process is serious; another example, the environmental protection department does not have a special collection team, the collection of law enforcement and sewage charges belong to the same department, a large number of charges work normal Environmental supervision and law enforcement. What is more serious is that due to the lack of an effective budget constraint mechanism and supervision and evaluation system for the use of environmental protection funds raised through sewage charges, the phenomenon of fund misappropriation is prominent and the use of funds is inefficient.
Jia Kang, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the Ministry of Finance’s Institute of Fiscal Science, also believes that China’s long-term environmental management was dominated by command and control methods, but with the transition to a market economy and the development of various economic entities, laws alone And administrative intervention is far from solving the problem of environmental pollution, but it needs more use of economic levers based on market mechanisms such as taxes or charges.
The reporter learned from the two sessions that many members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) believe that the time has come for China to levy an environmental tax. CPPCC members pointed out that the implementation of the sewage charging system laid the technical foundation for the introduction of environmental taxes. Because the system has established a relatively complete collection and management system, including the object of charging, the scope of the collection, the charging standards and the levy. Moreover, Hubei and other provinces have also implemented taxation agency reforms to collect sewage charges. Therefore, the introduction of environmental taxes can be carried out in accordance with the model of taxation on the basis of sewage charges, appropriately expanding the scope of tax collection, raising the standards for collection, and including the tax system, broadening the scope of regulation, strengthening regulation, and increasing the scope of education. rigidity". Jia Kang said that with the establishment and improvement of the market economy and the continuous development of China's compound tax system in the past 30 years, the economic conditions and tax conditions for the introduction of environmental taxes in China have basically been met.
The CPPCC member from the Agricultural and Labour Party told the reporter that the ongoing adjustment of China’s tax policy provided an opportunity and space for the introduction of environmental taxes. Among them, the income tax reform has reduced tax revenue by nearly 100 billion yuan, and the transformation of value-added tax has also reduced the tax burden of enterprises to a certain extent. All these have increased the acceptability of the introduction of environmental taxes and provided taxation space. In addition, the experience of the developed countries has also provided help for China’s introduction of environmental taxes. In accordance with the polluter pays principle, developed countries levy taxes on sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and battery taxes. These environmental taxes can not only control pollution emissions and change consumer behavior, but also raise funds for pollution control.
Jia Kang's preliminary idea on environmental taxes is that, first of all, the state will issue independent taxes on environmental taxes, water pollution control, air pollution control, solid waste pollution prevention and control, etc. will be the focus of China's environmental protection work in the coming period. The scope of the collection of China's environmental taxes should be set to include the discharge of pollutants such as waste water, waste gas, solid waste, and carbon dioxide emissions. He suggested setting a number of tax items and sub-tax items under the environmental tax category and making room for the inclusion of more targeted tax items.
It is time to introduce environmental taxes
In 2007, Pan Yue, the deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, proposed seven environmental and economic policies to be implemented in the future. Nowadays, policies such as green credit, green insurance, and green securities have started to be implemented. However, there is no specific timetable for the official introduction of environmental taxes. The call for the introduction of environmental taxes in China has been increasing, and has become a hot topic for the two sessions this year. Members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National Institute of Fiscal Science of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Democracy and the Ministry of Finance co-sponsored the suggestion that China should formulate and introduce an environmental tax as soon as possible to meet the severe environmental situation and accomplish the tasks of energy conservation and emission reduction.