The Theoretical Thought And Practical Choices Of Chinese Environmental Taxes

Environmental taxation system has a long history. Beginning with its narrow meaning which is pollution tax mentioned by British economist, Arthur Pigou, in The Economics of Welfare, that is the reason why it was called Pigovian Taxes. Pigovian Taxes were based on theory of externality and theory of public goods, and its analysis was at perfect competitive market and imperfect competitive market. Following scholars have been continuing studying on Pigovian Taxes, and built environmental taxes. From broad sense, environmental taxes includes pollution tax, products tax, tax difference, tax remission, users charges, etc.. When environmental issues are getting more and more attention, the purposes of the environmental taxation system are protecting environment and resources, balancing ecological environment and achieving sustainable development.Compared with regular governance methods, e.g. Regulatory Policy, selling Pollution Rights, subsidy,Emission Charges, etc. environmental taxes have more superiorities. It not only has consumption substitute effect, produce substitute effect and double dividend, but also can achieve intragenerational equity and intergenerational equity. China has not levied taxes in spite of ecology deterioration, huge waste of resource, soil erosion, water and air pollution, pollution transformation from developed countries and green barrier in trade between developed countries and developing countries. Chinese current taxation system has only few consideration related to environmental technology and environmental protection in excise tax, value-added tax, domestic-funded enterprise income tax, foreign trader income tax and foreign enterprise income tax. Emission Charges have been developing for 20 years, and gained a lot in theoretical foundation, measurement standards, operation procedure, etc.. But it still has many problems, e.g. single-factor charge, low charge rate of over-standard emission charge, incomplete charge items and limited charge coverage, etc.. So it is time to further study Chinese environmental taxation system, and levy environmental taxes.Now China has abilities to input environmental taxation system. Externality theories, public goods theories, sustainable development theories and good policy give it strong theoretical support and policy support; profit maximum and quality maximum are internal motivation;...