Research On The Impact Of Environmental Taxes And Fees On The High-quality Development Of Regional Economy

Since the reform and opening up for more than 40 years,our country’s economic construction has achieved rapid development.But it is also accompanied by serious environmental pollution problems.The severe environmental pollution urgently requires the government to implement various environmental regulations to control pollution and improve the quality of the ecological environment.In 2018,the environmental protection tax was officially introduced in our country.Relevant tax policies are obtained from the pollutant discharge fee system through tax burden translation,which increases the authority of the legal level to a certain extent.However,due to the lack of green governance capacity of pollutant discharge fee,pollutant discharge fee were often used as a tool for local competition and a source of income for environmental protection agencies in the past,and it played a limited role in guiding green production of enterprises and promoting green development.Therefore,the environmental protection tax derived from the pollution discharge fee reform still needs to be revised and improved continuously.From the perspective of high-quality development of the regional economy,the paper examines the effectiveness and inadequacies of the current environmental taxes and fees system,promotes the improvement of the tax system,formulates supporting incentive measures,and promotes coordination and cooperation between departments.The paper is important for perfecting the current environmental protection tax policy and promoting highquality economic development in the region.This paper adopts a combination of theoretical and empirical analysis,combines with the panel data of 30 provinces（autonomous regions and municipalities）across the country from 2004 to 2019,analyzes the impact of environmental tax and fee on the high-quality development of regional economies.First,combined with relevant theories,it explains the related concepts of environmental taxes and fees and high-quality economic development.Secondly,analyzed the development history and current situation of environmental taxes and fees in our country,established an indicator system for high-quality economic development,and calculated and compared the level of highquality economic development in various regions of our country;Finally,on the basis of analyzing the mechanism of environmental taxes and fees on high-quality economic development,the data of 30 provinces（autonomous regions and municipalities）are empirically analyzed.And conducted an extended research on the nonlinear relationship between environmental tax and fee with high-quality regional economic development.The conclusion of this paper:（1）At this stage,the overall level of high-quality economic development in various regions in our country is on the rise,but there are still problems such as low overall levels and large regional gaps;（2）Generally speaking,our country’s environmental taxes and fees have inhibited high-quality economic development.The main reason is that there are deficiencies in the tax system design and collection and management of environmental tax and fee in this stage.The collection of environmental tax and fee will lead to an increase in the production cost of enterprises,and will also encourage enterprises to innovate.However,the inhibitory effect brought by the increase in cost is greater than the positive incentive effect brought by innovation;（3）From different time periods,after the large-scale implementation of environmental protection policies in 2006 and the formal introduction of environmental protection tax in 2018,environmental tax and fee have shown a significant impact on the high-quality development of the regional economy during the three periods of 2004-2006,2007-2017 and 2018-2019.From the perspective of different regions,the inhibitory effect of the eastern region is stronger than that of the western region.And the central and northeastern regions are still negatively related,but not significant;（4）From the perspective of extended research,there is a single threshold effect between environmental tax and fee and high-quality regional economic development.When the threshold value is crossed,although environmental tax and fee still have an inhibitory effect on the high-quality development of the economy,the effect tends to weaken significantly.The reason may be that the design of our country’s environmental protection tax system still needs to be improved at this stage,and the "blue dividend" generated by environmental protection tax has a limited role.Combined with theoretical analysis and empirical analysis,this paper believes that our country should continue to improve the environmental protection tax system design,tax collection and management and related supporting measures at this stage.In this way,the environmental protection tax can play the "blue dividend" effect of the environmental protection tax and promote the high-quality development of the regional economy.