The Tobacco And Alcohol Tax Reform In The Period Of The Nationalist Government (1927-1937)

To increase the fiscal revenue,the Beijing government gradually pay attention to the taxation of tobacco and alcohol,so the taxation system had been gradually constructed.However,there were a series of problems in tobacco and alcohol tax collection,such as the different tax systems in different provinces,the chaotic collection of taxes and fees,the huge gap between the expected income and the actual income,and the uneven tax burden of China and foreign countries.Due to the poor management of the tobacco and alcohol tax system,the Nanjing Government(1927-1937)carried out continuous reform and rectification of the system in order to increase fiscal revenue.At the beginning of its establishment,the Nanjing government inherited the public sale system of tobacco and alcohol of the Beijing government since the improvement of its internal infrastructure and policies was the primary task.The Nanjing Government issued a series of reform regulations and implementation rules about the tobacco and alcohol tax and carried out a comprehensive reform on the basis of political stability.The following six parts were involved in the reform: unified cigarette tax,foreign wine tax,fixed tax on local tobacco and wine,stamp tax and license tax.Although these measures helped to increase the fiscal revenue of the government,there were a series of problems during the implementation process,which led to the opposition from businessmen.Businessmen expressed their objection mainly by presenting papers to the government,strikes and using newspapers.The objections from tobacco and alcohol merchants mainly focused on two aspects.On the one hand,they were against the excessive tax rate of the government;on the other hand,they believed that the government's tax rates on Chinese and foreign merchants were unfair.Faced with the opposition from businessmen,the government made a series of adjustments to the tobacco and alcohol tax policy.The government classified beer,wine and fire wine under the unified tax,expanded the scope of the unified tax,and reorganized the unified tax organization,and the stamp tax was further adjusted.This revision showed the government's efforts to promote the development of tobacco and alcohol business.Meanwhile,however,the ultimate purpose of the tobacco and alcohol tax reform issued by the national government was to increase fiscal revenue,which indicated that the interests of the people were not the key focus when policies are formulated.Therefore,the policies formulated by the government were inevitably opposed by businessmen.In general,the tobacco and alcohol tax reform carried out by the Nanjing National Government in its early stage aimed at increasing fiscal revenue.Meanwhile,the government also gradually unified the tobacco and alcohol taxes through the reform.Before the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese war in 1937,all the tobacco and alcohol taxes were included in the unified tax system,except for the local tobacco and alcohol taxes.A tax system pattern centered on tariffs,salt taxes and unified taxes formed.At the same time,however,there were a series of problems during the implementation process of the national government's tobacco and alcohol tax reform.On the one hand,due to the limited scope of the implementation of the policy and the specific implementation situations in different provinces,the national government failed to form a unified national law since the implementation of the tobacco and alcohol tax policies.On the other hand,due to the imperialist aggression and the corruption and incompetence of the National Government,the formulation of the tobacco and alcohol tax policies was interfered by various countries,and it was not completely independent.Although the government revised the tobacco and alcohol policies during the implementation,it was unable to formulate tobacco and alcohol tax policies independently due to its reliance on imperialism.The unfair tax rates between Chinese and foreign merchants were still prominent in many aspects.In addition,the government's centralization of tobacco and alcohol taxes caused the insufficiency of local income.The deeply-rooted reasons were related to the limited ruling scope of the National Government and the special historical background of imperialist aggression.