Study On Application Of Death Penalty To Crimes Involving Taxation

The thesis consists of three parts, studies and analyzes the issue of application of death penalty to crimes involving taxation. Through analysis of progress and present situations on legislation for criminal offence involving taxation in China, and consideration of issues concerning application of death penalty arising from criminal offence involving taxation, it discusses the non-necessity of application of death penalty to crimes involving taxation and puts forward proposals on innovation and perfection of application of death penalty to crimes involving taxation.Part I tells the origin of application of death penalty to crimes involving taxation. This part briefly reviews the three phases of criminal legislation for taxation of our country, i.e. the nothingness phase of criminal legislation for taxation from the foundation of China to 1979, the rapid development phase from 1979 to March 1997, and the phase in 1997, when the new criminal law is revised and a complete system of criminal legislation for taxation of China was established. At the beginning, there was no criminal law basis for china to punish taxation crimes; then China began to emphasize the punishment against taxation crime; and finally since taxation crime becomes increasingly serious, death penalty is applied. Additionally, the first part also analyzes the important constructive conditions of two kinds of taxation crimes that are applicable to death penalty as specified by criminal law, i.e. the crime of falsely making out specialized VAT receipts in order to swindle drawback and set off taxation receipts, and crime of selling counterfeit invoices for the exclusive use of VAT. This part paves the way for the forthcoming study of issues related to application of death penalty to taxation crime Part II is the main part of this thesis, and emphatically discusses the non-necessity of application of death penalty to crimes involving taxation as well as several reasons for abolition of application of death penalty to taxation crime. To begin with, this part discusses the origin of death penalty and tells that death penalty is a kind of residue of old way of revenge and it, as a savage punishment, is not suitable in the civilized today. This thesis goes on to introduces the opinions of several theorists of abolition of death penalty, such as Beckaria, Benson, Philly, and Leest provides theoretical basis for the forthcoming proposal to abolish application of death penalty to crimes involving taxation in China. Then, the thesis, from the view that taxation crime is a kind of economic crime, addresses that economic crime should not be applicable for death penalty and subsequently make a conclusion that taxation crime is not applicable for death penalty as well. Ultimately, the thesis gives several specific reasons why death penalty should not be applied to taxation crime in China. The first one is the invalidity of application of death penalty to taxation crime. Up till now, 195 persons nationwide have been sentenced to death by first instance for crimes concerning VAT invoices. 70 of them have been executed. However, the trend in which taxation crimes are getting more is not effectively contained. So it is shown that death penalty' containment effect on taxation crime is not obvious. In stead, the country gets good effect of preventing relevant crimes involving taxation through high-tech ways to implement "Golden Tax Project", using information technology to prevent and counter crimes of utilizing special invoice for VAT and to construct electronic monitoring system of VAT. Therefore, the effect of death penalty is less than that of technical prevention and investigation and prosecution. The second one is the unsuitability of application of death penalty to taxation crimes. To take a general view of legislation of every country today, clauses of death penalty mainly apply to crimes of four aspects, i.e. serious crimes against state, crimes against military duties in war, crimes against public security and crimes of murder.