Tax Under The Constitutionalism

The center of economical constitutionalism is citizen property rights. Citizenproperty rights are concepts not only in private law but also in public law. Propertyrights connect the protection of property rights and public powers. As one kind ofpublic powers, tax transfers private property from private field to public field.Because property rights are lawful means to obtain private property, how to controlthis power in case it infringes property rights is a problem. Government needs toprovide pubic products and services, and also it has to protect the rights and liberty ofpeople. So we can say that tax is price that we pay for rights and liberty.Tax is always connected with constitutionalism in history. Taking England asexample, the foundation of constitutionalism begins with the tax fights betweencitizen and the sovereign. Tax acting as a sword to weakens the feudal monarchy andpushes the foundation of parliament. People own more discourse rights in this process.In order to control the power of tax and protect property rights, people urge tocontrol the power and supervise the use of the tax, which are the key points ofconstitutionalism.China is a country which is still groping for constitutionalism. Although there istaxation in China, we still not take the road of constitutionalism like other westerncountries. There is market economy system in China, but the official standards stilloccupy our country, most of the people think that tax is only duty but not right. All weneed is obey the government’s order. They do not realize that tax is the price they payfor public products and services, they are equal in this relationship. There are stillmany problems in taxation of our country. So that this paper proposes to study therelationship between taxation and constitutionalism.The author studies tax under the constitutionalism from four parts. In the firstpart, the author studies the basic theory of tax from the angle of tax law andconstitutionalism. There are different emphaseses in these two kinds of theories. Tax law emphasize the volunteer, compellent and the character of duty. Whereas tax underthe constitutionalism emphasize that tax is not only duty but also right. Tax includetax collection and tax use. That’s why the author choose this topic. One countrychoose which theory decides its taxation and the citizen’s will to pay tax. We can tracethe origin of the flaws of the taxation of our country in the traditional tax law. In thesecond part, the author analyzes how the tax plays in the process of constitutionalism.The author choose America and England as example. So that we can have theconclusion that tax is the key point of constitutionalism. The parliament wasestablished in the fights between citizen and sovereign. This part intends to analyzewhy China did not found constitutionalism like other western countries. In the thirdpart, the author analyzes the justness of the power of tax. The power of tax is one ofthe most aggressive powers in China. The author tries to analyze it from twoperspectives, one is creditor’s rights and debts, the other is property rights. In thefourth part, the author analyzes the taxation of China. There are many problems intaxation of China, for example, citizen do not realize their rights of tax, and also thereare many flaws in the legislation of tax. The legislation of tax is misused by theDepartment of State. Most of the laws are enacted by the Department of State. Theauthor puts forward suggestions contraposing to those problems. There is a long wayto establish taxation under the constitutionalism of China, but we can take is as achance. The power of tax decides the fiscal ablility of one country, so that controllingthe power of tax decides the action of one country.Maybe we can restrict thegovernment’s power from it, which is also the key point of constitutionalism.