The Research On The Chinese Resource Tax Reform

Natural resources are the foundation of human’s survival and development. Almost all countries pay attention to the development and protection of natural resources. In order to make better development of resources, to adjust the differential resource and to reflect the compensation for the use of state resources and the damage arising from the exploitation of resources, most countries have collected taxes on exploring the resources. In theory, resource tax can be divided into general and special tax resources. The former is to tax on the absolute mine rent, and the latter is on the differential mint rent. This reflects the policy of general collection and differential adjustment. China began to impose tax on resources in1984. But only have three tax items at that time:coal, oil and natural gas. After the reform in1994, the tax items expanded to seven kinds:crude oil, natural gas, coal, non-metallic ores, ferrous metal ores, non-ferrous metal ores and salt. And the all the tax were collected by the amount. Under such condition, the scope of taxation was narrow and the effect of differential adjustment was not obvious. Moreover, the resource tax contributed little to the local finance.Resource tax reform has become a hot topic in academic since1990s.It first began in Xinjiang province on June1,2010, whose core was to change the collection way from by amount to by price. And on November1,2011, this reform was promoted to the whole country, accompanied by the issue of the Rules of the People’s Republic of China for the Implementation of the Resource tax regulations. The temporary rate was5%for the oil and natural gas in the whole county.The resources tax reform once again aroused the concern in the academic. But till now, systematic study of the resource tax reform is far from enough. Therefore, based on the reform of the Xinjiang resource tax, my paper lists the effect and current problems of the reform and recommends some policies, looking forward to the further improvement of the resource tax reform.The main contents and views of the paper The paper is divided into six parts. The first chapter describes the background and significance of the topics, explaining the important roles that the resource tax plays on sustainable development of the economy, society and environment of Xinjiang, on guidance and regulation of the use the resource and on optimization of industry and so on. It also has a literature review of the research at home and abroad on the resource tax.Based on the international experience. the second chapter analyses the concept, the classification and the theoretical basis of the tax resource. It also discusses several academic recognized land rent and price theory, including the land rent theory, the sustainable development theory, and the property rights theory.The third chapter is the investigation of the situation before the resource tax. It first elaborates the reform process of the resource tax, and then analyses the existing problems of the current resource tax. On the one hand when the tax is collected by quantity, the tax rate is relatively low and the tax basis is irrational. On the other hand, when it is collected by price, the change of the resource price is not well reflected in the change of the tax rate. Moreover, the relationship between the tax and expense is confusing and the collection and management of the tax is non-standard. All of these are the problems remained to solve.Setting Xinjiang as an example, the fourth chapter does some empirical analysis of the reform, including the quantitative analysis of the effect on local income, oil and gas industry and consumption. On the local income side, the tax income increased by1.78billion RMB on the reform year. On the oil and gas industry side, the reform only has a little effect on the profit of the resource enterprises. And on the consumption side, via the quantitative analysis, the reform also has some influence on the price of the resource, but in the short term, it is not significant to the consumers.The fifth chapter analyses the current problems of the Xinjiang resource tax reform. For example, the tax standard is not reasonable. The existence of the comprehensive tax reduction system will affect the reform effect. The tax rate is low. The benefit distribution among the stakeholders and the resource expense is irrational.The last chapter recommends some policy for the further development of the resource tax according to the effect analysis of the reform and the existing problems during the reform, including the tax price, tax rate, comprehensive tax reduction system, distribution of the resource tax and the coordinated income tax reform of the resource enterprises.The innovation of the paperFirst, the paper selects a topic very close to the reality and its analysis is rather systematic. During the analysis of the resource tax reform, combining with the policies, laws and the situation of the pilot areas of the reform, the author have done a very comprehensive and systematic research.Secondly, the paper uses a wide variety of research methods, including the theoretical research and the documentary research and makes full use of the empirical research. In the different research parts, the author makes full use of the measurement tools such as SPSS, Eviews and analyses the reform effect in a quantitative way.Last but not the least, based on the actual situation of the different areas and the resource exploitation, the author proposes some constructive suggestions, such as the benefit distribution of the resource tax. the selection of the tax rate.Undoubtedly, the above innovation is the author’s personal view. The criticism and correction to the deficiencies by the experts and scholars is also welcome.