A Study On The Legal System Of Administrative Fees

Administrative fee, as a form of non-tax revenue of government, is animportant financial resource for the government to function well. It allows the government to participate in income distribution. After the reform and opening up, as the administrative functions are strengthened, the Chinese government took up the responsibility to promote economic development on top of various other administrative and social functions. Thus, there was such phenomena: too many fee items,irregular collection process and lack of management on the collected funds. Administrative fees have become heavy burden on enterprises, and have become a negative factor for social and economic development. It must be dealt with properly. This paper reviews administrative fee systems from major countries under continental law system and British law system, as well as Taiwan region of China. The paper takes the viewpoint of a government employee and describes the history and current status of administrative fee system of China. It gives realistic positive appraisal to the system in 1980s and 1990s. In that particular period of time, administrative fee system provided the country with great amount of funds for its development. While there was not enough government revenue, administrative fees made important contribution towards stabilizing the government employee group and strengthening overall administration of the society. The paper also discusses the problems brought by the current administrative fee system, and asks many questions on the transparency and completeness of the system, as well as the legitimate and right usages of the funds. The paper analyzes the reasons for the problems from legal and institutional perspectives. The author thinks that China can't simply reform the current system only by the "fee into tax" policy. The author proposes that we should carry out more theoretical researches on administrative fee system, speed up relevant legislation, further complete the collection process and put in order the current fee items, so that the administrative fee system of China can take a standardized path and continue to make positive contribution towards the social and economic development.