On the Construction of China’s Environmental Tax Revenue Use System

Abstract

Environmental governance and protection is an important task for governments all over the world. Among them, environmental tax is the most important means for countries to protect the environment by system. However, the Levy of environmental tax often has a direct negative impact on the international competitiveness of pollution-intensive industries and export-oriented enterprises. Meanwhile, it also causes the problem of income redistribution, such as raising the living cost of low-income groups. It may be a good idea to build an environmental tax revenue use system so as to lower or eliminate these negative externalities. The construction of the environmental tax revenue use system is the core of the overall construction of the environmental tax legal system from the perspective of fiscal and taxation integration, which not only meets the basic requirements of the principles of tax law, but also has the value of law enforcement. As for China, it also has the promotion function of structural tax cuts. At present, China has not yet established a special system for the use of environmental tax revenue. Instead, environmental protection tax revenue is regarded as local tax revenue, which is included in the general public budget and used by local governments. However, the specific construction of a country’s environmental tax revenue use system should not be limited to the existing environmental tax laws and regulations in a country, but should conform to the trend of expanding the scope of environmental tax collection and make predictive research. Therefore, how to construct a systematic system for the use of environmental tax revenue in line with China’s actual needs is an urgent task for China to implement the foreseeability of environmental tax legislation. In theory, the basic ways of using environmental tax revenue include general fiscal revenue to make up fiscal deficits, special funds to solve environmental problems, revenue recycling to reduce the tax burden of other distorted taxes, etc. The implementation effect of the foreign environmental tax revenue use system verifies the necessity of constructing an environmental tax revenue use system. Its basic experience is to take fiscal neutrality” as the orientation of legislative reform, mostly adopt mixed income use system, special funds are still prevalent, and income recycling mechanism is increasingly favored. There are two enlightenments to our country: first, the system of using environmental tax revenue should become the basic supporting system of environmental tax reform in our country; second, the mechanism of income recycling should become an important part of the environmental tax revenue use system in our country. The construction of China’s environmental tax revenue use system should adhere to the three principles of synchronization of income use and environmental tax reform, including top-level design principle, fiscal balance and income neutrality principle guided by the overall interests of the society, and tax legality and public participation principle. Under the guidance of the above principles, the specific system under the combined mode of classification and mixed use is constructed: resource environmental tax revenue is regarded as general fiscal revenue; environment pollution and destruction income is treated as a special-purpose mode; carbon tax/energy tax revenue is introduced into the revenue recycling mechanism.