Study Of The Legal System Of Environmental Taxes

The fast development of modern economy is always followed by the problem of environment pollution. Many countries take the economic method as the environment policy to tackle the environmental problems. The World Bank once frankly pointed out that, China's air and water pollution, especially in the urban area, is among the most serious row in the world. Various pollutants in the air have exceeded the international standard for times over. The economic losses caused by the air and the water pollution every year in our country at present accounts for 3% - 8% of the annual GDP.The measures of our present environment policy mainly include the government direct control method and the economic method, in which the government direct control plays a main role. But in view of theory and other nation's , this method lacks efficiency in the market economy. As for the disadvantages of the present fee-levying for pollution discharge system and the scarcity of environment-economic methods in our country, it is very necessary to levy the environment tax. Besides, the adoption of the environment tax can increase the awareness and understanding of the cost and rareness of environmental resource among the taxpayers and the whole society, thus contributes to change its irrational consumption patterns and shifts towards sustainable consumption patterns which enhances our environmental awareness.In addition we can't prevent resist the international transfer of pollution as our country has not set up the environmental tax and the threshold of green trade. The capital for producing polluting products and the pollution-intensive industries in other nations have moved to China, which has caused the internalization of external costs of sewage and worsened China's ecological environment. In particular, after China's accession into WTO, the trade and major commercial disputes between the member states are mainly resolved under the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. The high-rate environmental tax and high-standard requirement on the environment of the developed nations make them abuse WTO rules and exercise the trade protectionism, which has caused great harm to China's trade and business. Levying of the environment tax is our first imperative, but the environment tax design needs considerations of both theoretical rationality and practical feasibility. We should design a environmental tax system which conforms to the Chinese actual conditions on the borrowing of international experience.Based on the theories of traditional economics, this article designs the environmental tax system with modern legal concept. The value orientation of different theoretical bases differs. The environment tax system based on economic law means more than the unity of social cost and personal cost on the environment according to the microeconomics. Besides the economic consideration, we must note the implementation effects of the environment tax system are various and that the advantages and disadvantages coexist. Therefore we should take the environmental tax system as one of the national macroeconomic control methods and positively handle the relationship of rights and obligations between personal benefits and the social benefits under the prerequisite of not bringing too much impact on social stability.The article includes four parts: The first part is the general theory of environmental tax; the second part is the theoretical base of environmental tax; the third part is the international comparison of environmental tax; the last part is the design of environmental tax system in our country.