Thought On Constitutional Taxation

With gradually perfecting the system of Socialist MarketEconomy, 90 percents finance comes from tax that makes ourcountry becomes a taxes and levies nation. The clauses ofprotecting human rights and private property have beenlegislated in constitution. Scholars start to study on tax fromconstitutional aspect. However, most of the researches stillstay around the level of tax law analysis. They either elaboratethe relation between tax and constitutionalism from historicaland economic aspects, or explain to protect taxpayers' rightsaccording to constitution from the aspect of taxpayers' right.However, none of them studies on constitutionalism in detailsor on how does constitution restricts taxation right. The tax,which is enforceability, has to be stipulated by constitution.The bourgeois constitutional practice in modern times alsobegan directly from Constitutional tax. This thesisreinterprets tax from a constitutional perspective, and makespoints on constraining tax by justice and that to achieveconstitutional tax by carrying out tax constitution beforehand.First, from elaborating the basic notions of constitutionand constitutionalism, this thesis reinterprets the essence oftax, and considers tax as the protection fee of right and asthe price of public products. Then, it discusses the relationbetween tax and constitutionalism from the historical,economic and ideological aspects, and considers tax as the economic motivation and as an economic foundation of constitutionalism.On the other hand, constitution provides a legal basis for tax.Tax legislation should be guided by constitution and shouldfollow the spirit of people sovereignty of constitution.Moreover, this thesis points out the present conditions andproblems regarding to tax stipulations in current constitutionof our country and put forward the suggestion that tax clauseshould be written into constitution on the basis of analyzingthe present necessity and possibility of tax constitution. Thelast but not the least, it adopts comparison and Positivismmethods toinvestigate tax items ruled by constitution in othercountries. It considers that initial optional step ofconstitutional tax in our country should be the principle oftax legation; the next step should be the principle of taxequity, the third one should be the reasonable distribution oftax legislation power between Central and local governments.