First Exploration For Traditional Chinese Legal Culture Of Taxation

The first aim of this essay is for an exploration and a path for the understanding of traditional culture is hoped to be obtained through the aspect of taxation law and the second and also the most primary one without doubt is to give a systematic and all-sided interpretation for traditional legal culture of taxation so that to provide helpful references for the environmental improvement of taxation legal system in contemporary China. Deduction, induction, and comparison are adopted in the research and the knowledge in the respects of economics, history, anthropology and folklore etc has been blended in. So it has a certain research characteristic of interdiscipline. Except for the introduction and the conclusion, six parts are in the whole essay.The illustration for the concept is in the first part. Based on the research of predecessors, it is proposed that taxation legal culture is a lifestyle that centers on residents, has and can make the value judgments and is closely related to the taxation law institutionally arranged. Traditional taxation legal culture can be reduced to code type legal culture from the respect of taxation while from the respect of tradition; it is reduced to a legal culture of culture type. According to the theory in which the legal culture tradition is a psychical and metaphysical theory without its entity while the traditional law is only about practical matters, I think that traditional taxation legal culture belongs to practical matters that include legal regulations, legal institutions, legal organizational framework, the concrete thoughts to instruct how to formulate legal institutions and the conduct of how to live under legal systems, as a whole, it is reflected as three basic factors at progression. They are value judgment, institutional arrangements and lifestyles.The second part is the comb for ideas. From the three aspects-doing or not, more or less, where it comes from and where it goes to that oppose each other but also complement each other, ideas of traditional taxation legal culture have been delved into secret facts or principles. Doing or not is also a matter of collecting or not, and it is an option of precondition and is connected with a series of contingency questions as what tax to be collected, how to collect, how much to be collected and how to use tax etc, and meanwhile, it also implicates the understanding of taxation nature and functions of the traditional society of China. More or less is an important standard for the consideration of taxation justices after choosing the doing of taxation. The most famous of it is Confucian idea:convergence in accordance with one's weakness. The idea of where it comes from and where it goes to is closer to taxation practice for it comes down to the specific application of tax and the opening up of tax base. So it is a regulation object on technical aspect.The specific interpretation for the traditional taxation legal culture is in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth parts. The reason for choosing the four factors-residents, land, business and government that are closely related to traditional taxation legal culture as the point cut of interpreting traditional taxation legal culture is that the four factors also cover the partition upon the four kinds of residents in armed forces, agriculture, industry and business in the traditional Chinese society and have a certain representativeness. In the demonstrating process, institutional transformations are taken as the main lines, customs and habits are taken as the complement and theoretical analysis are made under the premise of gaining a clear idea of historical facts.From residents based on forced labor and capitation, we can observe that the lifestyles of the residents under the traditional Chinese taxation legal system are not necessarily be the lifestyles of today's so called civilization. At least, we can find the uncivilized treatment towards taxpayers under the original system designing, but in the slow process of development, a certain humanistic trend is shown gradually. That also shows that the lifestyles of residents closely related to taxation law in traditional Chinese society also accord with the developing process from uncivilized state to civilized state, so traditional taxation legal culture has its historic feature.Regarding the land in citizen's living space, it can be observed that the traditional Chinese feudal land tax system is not only the land as the levying object but also the space room that citizens live in and still is a rule which makes neither the peasants as the taxpayer nor the government as the subject of taxation can get rid of the said space place. And at the same time, due to its support for the operation of the government, the traditional Chinese feudal land tax affects and is affected by the tenure system of the land as the levying object, and thereby has an effect on the space room that citizens live in. To a great extent, the immobility of local China and the binding of peasants by the feudal land tax system as well as the obedience of the peasants towards the feudal land tax system are indispensible to each other. The peasants who have grown themselves in the land are stable, which makes the agriculture stable, the feudal land tax stable and also the governmental ruling stable. Of course, being stable does not mean that there is not any changes, while in fact, the feudal land tax system has been at the forefront of the historical reform all the way.From the business, based on the business and industry sundry tax, which is pouring the mobility factor into the stable society, it can be observed that weigh farming curb business is the mainstream ideology and one of the fundamental economic thoughts of traditional Chinese society. In consideration of tax revenue legislation, that weigh farming curb business can levy heavy taxation towards merchants and business is corresponding with the fundamental realities of the country as an agricultural country, but in fact, has certain differences from the political theory criterion pursued by the governor. Without farming flabby not only makes peasants live and work in peace and contentment, what's more, supplies a long-term and stable government revenue through the method of feudal land tax. However, similarly do not live without business has the practical meaning in traditional Chinese society. Subject to the tax system of business, the merchants'fortune and the development of business were full of twists and turns; while, the nominally tacky and the practically rich and honorable life style can not be mastered by the habitual thought.From the government, based on tax collection and administration, leading traditional Chinese society, it can be observed that since the real history, the tax authorities have never given up to pay attention to the tax collection and administration. The three Dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou had established their own finance and tax administration systems of some scale. However, the great reform of administration system of Qin Dynasty made the central and the local governments all-in-one and divide and rule the tax collection and administration. The carrying out of the legal system of revenue was really flexible from time to time. The effect of tax collection and administration was also closely related to the period in which a capable official in financing appears in the dynasty. Such officials always made their own dynasty's tax collection and administration spring to life from the severe illness from time to time on the base of innovation of systems, but soon all these went into declining. Especially the relationship between the central and the local governments has been interfering the administration plan of the dynasty all the way. The highly intensified centralization wants to keep a firm grip on the local government, and the principle of unified leadership and management by different levels is fit for the traditional Chinese tax division of powers. Unified collection and allocation of funds by the state is substantially a successful example in tax levying and tax expending. Sometimes due to biting off more than one can chews, the administration system of fiscal responsibility system has to be applied. The central government has the absolute authority on the nationwide tax collection and administration, the appropriation from above to below for the public finance expenditure is also a reflection of infinite royal graciousness, in which the practical operation shall be filled with the flexibility of the principle of efficiency.From the above observation, we can make a primary judgment:traditional taxation legal culture not only guides on spiritual level but also provides on institutional level while taxation system covers the project of resident's space and place of living as in cess taxation system, and at the same time, the taxation system itself is characterized by the results of game playing among different stakeholders. Traditional Chinese taxation legislation is not a pure and pure taxation legislative activity but it is also restricted and influenced by many direct or indirect factors.