On China’s Environmental Protection Tax Preferences

On January 1,2018,the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China(hereinafter referred to as the "Environmental Protection Tax Law")came into effect.The "Environmental Protection Tax Law" marked the birth of my country’s first green tax.The state began to use taxation to protect and improve the environment and guide all aspects of production and lifestyles in society.In the "Environmental Protection Tax Law",a special chapter has set up "tax relief",and the legislators want to encourage relevant taxpayers to save energy and reduce emissions through the economic benefits brought by tax incentives to achieve the purpose of environmental protection.However,there are some problems in the current environmental protection tax,such as unreasonable tax exemption,insignificant incentive effect of tax reduction,and imperfect tax preferential rules.Therefore,how to improve the preferential tax design of environmental protection tax is of practical significance.Based on this starting point,this article roughly follows the research path of legislative analysis,problem analysis,and problem solving in writing,and divides the main content of the article into four parts for exposition: In the first part,an overview of the tax incentives for environmental protection tax is introduced,the interpretation of environmental protection tax,the background of its introduction,the meaning and main forms of tax incentives,and the practice of environmental protection tax in my country are briefly described;In the second part,the normative analysis of the tax incentives in the Environmental Protection Tax Law is carried out,combined with the legislative purpose and legislative data of the Environmental Protection Tax Law to illustrate the legislative design of the tax incentives of the environmental protection tax,and then analyze the exemption clauses of the environmental protection tax on this basis(including the four specific exemptions in the field of agricultural production,liquid pollution sources,pollutant treatment institutions,and the comprehensive utilization of solid wastes,as well as the bottom of the state council to set exceptional tax incentives),tax reduction clauses(including two specific tax reduction benefits)and other tax incentives related to environmental protection;On the basis of the above analysis,the third part puts forward the problem of the preferential tax Save of China’s current environmental protection tax,pointing out that the current problems in the tax exemption of environmental protection tax are specifically manifested in the unclear standards for large-scale breeding,the meaning of comprehensive utilization of solid waste,the unreasonable tax exemption setting of pollutant treatment agencies,and the insufficient limitation of the State Council’s authority to set exceptional tax preferences,and the conditions for the reduction of environmental protection taxes are no longer unreasonable,and the design incentive effect of the two tax reduction preferences is not significant,in the overall design of tax incentive rules,the form of tax preference is single,the consideration of regional difference factors is not added,and a tax incentive assessment system has not yet been established.Finally,the fourth part puts forward suggestions for the aforementioned problems,improves the design of tax exemption and tax reduction clauses,and improves the overall rules of tax incentives from three aspects:enriching the forms of tax incentives,increasing the consideration of regional differences,and establishing a tax incentive evaluation system.