On Contract Spirit Of Fiscal Constitution

The spirit of the law is the soul of law system, it rooted in the various relations it regularted, and is closely related to social environment. The reason why our country has so many problems in the field of fiscal is that we lack of the spirit of fiscal constitution, especially the contract spirit. With the development of the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics and the expansion of government, the government’s financial power have expanded, and have a risk to violate citizens’ legal property rights. The history have proved that if we can’t resolve it properly, we well be in troubled in the vicious circle which begin with the financial crisis, but it well translate to the economic crisis even a constitutional crisis. Therefore we should concern how to promote the spirit of contract of fiscal constitution, and restraint the government’s financial power within a reasonable range that it couldn’t violate citizens’ legal property rights when providing the public goods and services. The contract spirit of fiscal constitution is the unity of formal rationality and substantial rationality. The formal rationality is the legal norms which includs statutory taxation clause, statutory fiscal expenditure clause, division of fiscal revenue and expenditure between government clause. The substantial rationality includs the taxpayer right standard ande the unification of the financial authority and the limited power.The rule of law is important, the good law is the prerequisite of good governance. We should formulate a perfect fiscal constitution which reflect the basic rules of national financial activities and correspond with the socialist market economy system in our country. However our country’s market economic system established relatively late, the tax state structure has not yet formed and we don’t have the contract culture, although our Constitution have financial clauses, much of them are authorization and fiscal organization clauses, there are fewer civil financial clauses. It is contrary to the contract spirits. So we must under the guidance of the contract spirits to complete the basic fiscal systems, and add the statutory taxation clause, statutory fiscal expenditure clause, division of fiscal revenue and expenditure between government clause and national debt clause to our Constitution to restraint the government’s financial power, and strengthen citizens’ financial power. Only in this way can we make the fiscal constitution’s formal reason and substantial reason unifies.However, acts of law are not sufficient for themselves, a effective legal operation mechanism plays an important rules to realize the fiscal constitution’s contract spirit. So we should give a full play to the National People’s Congress in the field of fiscal activities, running its power through the whole process of the national financial activities, transforming formal review to the substantive examination. Only in this way can we make the static fiscal constitution into a visible constitution.Of course, our country is in the period of social transition, we should consider how to construct the Chinese characteristic socialist market economic system and the great target of rule by law, providing good conditions for the future development of fiscal constitution. In a word we have a long way to go.