Ability-to-pay Principle Of Taxation And The Concept Conversion In Contemporary Chinese Tax Reforms

As the normative legal document that adjusts to tax administration and an economic means of redistribution that the country participates in the social wealth, tax law should regard equity as its ultimate and highest orientation.However, the tax reforms in China have never separated from the shackle of "efficiency comes first, balance equity", and the equity principle was relatively weak, which makes the social control function of tax law was greatly limited and the protection of taxpayers'rights is also lack of legal basis. Therefore, the tax reforms in the future should converse the idea timely and establish the idea of "equity preferentially, give consideration to efficiency", that is imperative.In the taxation field, ability-to-pay principle of taxation is a concrete manifestation of equity principle, whose purpose is to make taxation an equitable distribution among taxpayers and to guarantee every taxpayer bears a fair tax burden. In the current backgrounds that income distribution gap is widening and establish the harmonious society, making ability-to-pay principle of taxation as the basic legal principle so as to fully regulates tax legislation, tax enforcement and tax justice and guides our future tax reforms, is of great importance in the theoretical and practical meaning.According to ability-to-pay principle of taxation, we can find that there are some defects in Chinese tax laws, such as value-added tax is contrary to the principle in characteristics, tax rates, taxpayer types and mechanisms; consumption tax is contrary to the principle in the objects of taxation and tax rates; individual income tax is contrary to the principle in the income adjustment, tax model, expense deduction and tax rates; the omission of legacy tax, gift tax and social security tax is also contrary to the principle.From the perspective of ability-to-pay principle of taxation, the main measures to perfecting tax laws include enhancing the direct taxes'role in the fair burden of taxation by revising tax structures; perfecting value-added tax based on the transformation of value-added tax; perfecting consumption tax based on the adjustment of the scope of taxation; perfecting individual income tax and levying inheritance tax, gift tax and social security tax timely.