Consumer Areas Of Environmental Taxes And Charges

Environmental problems in consuming field have attracted wide attention recently. Environmental pollution in consumption is extensive and dispersive, which has become a new challenge to environmental management. The object of environmental management has changed from important pollution sources to every one in society. And in social life, market price will affect one's decision-making and behavior permanently. Consequently, environmental tax in consumption will increase market price and then lead consumers to adjust their behavior spontaneously. This is beneficial to cultivate public environmental awareness and environment-friendly consumption pattern.Unfortunately, the environmental management measures in our country still mainly focus on production field. Government and academic fields lack in the study on environmental tax in consumption. On the basis of it, this paper will regard the consuming field as a whole system and make thorough research on environmental tax in consumption.We make a contrast analysis on the system design and social background about environmental tax in consumption at home and abroad. And we have found the immense gap in micro and macro levels between China and OECD countries which have put environmental tax in consumption into successful practice. At the micro-level, environmental taxes in OECD countries have nearly covered all resident consuming items. However, environmental taxes in consumption applied in our country haven't been put into full play because of narrow scope of taxation and low tax rate. At the macro-level, OECD countries which have implemented environmental tax in consumption successfully have small income gap. But the residents' income gap in our country has been growing increasingly wider, which is unfavorable to implement environmental tax in consumption. Based on it, this paper discusses how to perfect environmental tax system in consumption while social background and restriction factors will not fundamentally change in the short run in China.We make a detailed discussion on tax items, tax rates, taxable level and distributing effect and so on. And then this paper summarizes the basic principles of environmental tax in consumption in our country. We take fuel tax as an example to probe into some principles of fuel tax design according to the aforementioned problems at the micro and macro level. We have to admit the application of environmental tax in consumption in our country must meet some difficulties. By means of contrast analysis and case study, these limitations and difficulties can be exposed truly. These studies will be helpful for the further study on achievement of environmental tax system in consumption.