Survival Strategies of Township Governments in Rural China: from predatory taxation to land trade

Based on my fieldwork in rural China in 2004–2005, where I conducted semi-structured interviews with 108 local cadres and villagers, this article explores the survival strategies of township governments as the most recent tax reforms (i.e. the tax-for-fee reform and the abolition of the agricultural tax) have been implemented since 2000. It argues that township governments have taken adaptive strategies to maintain over-quota personnel even under pressure to reduce it. It finds that the strategies have changed from predatory taxation in the 1990s to land trade in the last decade, while the implementation of the rural tax reforms has brought fiscal crises in agricultural villages. Local officials have a limited incentive to respond to collective resistance on taxation but do not have the same incentive on land disputes.     

适应现代市场经济必须取消农业税——我国农村税制改革的出路思考之一

我国农村税制改革的第一步是取消农业税,认清我国农业税的性质和取消农业税的原因是一个重要理论前提.我国的农业税名义上(法定的)是收益税,形式上是资源税,本质上是对农业生产行为征税,是行为税.在当代工业化市场经济国家,免征农业税是通例,而且征收农业税违背税收公平和效率原则.为了保持我国农业部门的可持续发展和增强我国农产品的国内、国际竞争力,"支农"措施必须从取消农业税开始.     

税收立宪的价值及其在我国的运用

西方国家通过税收立宪,实现了国家征税权的宪法限制、私有财产权的宪法地位、纳税人权利的宪法保障,最终走上了宪政发展的道路。我国宪法税收条款缺失,没有规定税收法定原则,行政机关成为税收立法权和执行权的中心,使得征税权在我国成为几乎不受约束的权力。我国宪法对于私有财产权与公有财产权实行不平等保护,只规定了纳税人义务内容而没有规定权利内容,导致纳税人权益无从得到切实保障。税收立宪的价值就在于通过限制国家征税权来保障人权并实现宪政。     

论税务机关征管、税制因素与纳税遵从

纳税遵从也叫纳税人遵从或税收遵从，是指纳税人必须遵照并服从税法的规定来按期申报、按期足额缴税。税收遵从是依法治税的体现，只要存在税收，纳税人就必须要按税法规定来履行纳税义务。影响纳税人遵从行为的因素是多方面的，既有纳税人自身的因素，也有社会环境的因素，另外，税务人员本身的执法与服务水平、税务机关征管模式、税务机关的征管与处罚力度、税制简便程度等因素也影响着纳税遵从。     

个人所得税改革探讨

我国个人所得税起征点由800元提高到了1600元,这一改革措施没有从根本上解决个人所得税由于实行统一免征额所带来的实际上的不公平问题。除此之外,我国个人所得税还存在着税制不完善、税率结构不合理、征纳不充分等缺陷。我国可以从采用分类综合所得税制、提高边际税率、加强税收征管等措施入手,进一步深化个人所得税的改革。     

The Politics of Central Tax Collection in China since 1994: local collusion and political control

The central leaders in China adopted a tax assignment system and centralized taxation in 1994 with the goal of increasing central tax revenues. By setting up the National Tax Bureau, the central leaders intended to leave central tax collection undisturbed by local influences. However, informal practices at the local level revealed that the local governments colluded with the central tax bureaucrats stationed in their regions at the expense of central interests. The need to develop local economies, an important task assigned to local governments, is one important reason behind local interference in central tax collection. This study finds that the central government coped with this problem by changing the incentives of the provincial party secretaries through linking central tax collection in a jurisdiction with their chance of promotion.     

农村税费改革与政府效率

按照“三个取消、一个逐步取消、两个调整、一项改革”的要求,农村税费改革取得了阶段性成果。改革面临的瓶颈及公共经济学有关政府效率及“有限的和有效的政府”等理论,为赋税制度的公共选择改革和乡镇机构改革提供了佐证和支撑。源于农村税费改革的乡镇撤并,其意义已经超出了农村税费改革本身,实现了多重效应的结合,推进了农村税费改革向深层次展开。     

影响农村法律秩序实现的因素分析——以周口平坟事件为例

改革开放以后,农村社会在经历了联产承包责任制的推行、土地改革的实施和农业税的废除后,逐渐由"熟人社会"向"半熟人社会"转变。在这个转变中,法律与社会的关系也发生了微妙的变化,法律逐渐成为规范社会的主要力量。但是,法律并没有在任何由其规范的社会环境内实现法律秩序,周口平坟事件就是一个典型的例证。影响农村法律秩序的形成有内在和外在因素,政府在行政活动中应充分考虑到各种内外因素。     

房产税改革面临的法律困境与出路——以沪渝两市房产税试点为例

房产税改革伴随着中国房地产宏观调控应运而生,对于国家收入分配制度和税收制度改革亦具有重大意义.该文以当下沪渝两试点地区的房产税改革现状为切入点,阐释了中国房产税改革所面临的困境,提出制定统一的房产税法、建立房屋产权登记制度、明确房产税税收要素、健全税收征管机制并合理配合保障房建设等解决问题的思路,旨在为房产税的良性运行提供持续稳定的长效保障.     

构建我国水污染税制的设想

在市场经济条件下,必须更多地运用税收手段促进水资源保护和水污染治理,开征水污染税很有必要。我国制定水污染税应遵循:“污染者付费”、“专税专用”的原则。     

大陆与台湾涉外税收协定之比较析论(下)——兼谈两岸避免双重征税之议题

国际税收协定是国际税收协调的基本形式。大陆与台湾经贸往来日益密切，因双方未签订避免双重征税协定．关于避免双重征税的议题在两岸经贸实践中日显突出。作为解决该问题的积极探索，应从国际征税现象之原因导入．运用归纳分析和比较研究的方法对国际上两个主要国际税收协定范本OECD范本和UN范本展开论述．进而对大陆与台湾各自对外签订的税收协定做一比较。     

大陆与台湾涉外税收协定之比较析论(上)——兼谈两岸避免双重征税之议题

国际税收协定是国际税收协调的基本形式。大陆与台湾经贸往来日益密切，因双方未签订避免双重征税协定．关于避免双重征税的议题在两岸经贸实践中日显突出。作为解决该问题的积极探索，应从国际征税现象之原因导入．运用归纳分析和比较研究的方法对国际上两个主要国际税收协定范本OECD范本和UN范本展开论述．进而对大陆与台湾各自对外签订的税收协定做一比较。     

论民族地区税源与税收收入的背离问题

《中华人民共和国企业所得税法》出台,标志着我国新一轮税收制度改革进入重要阶段。税收制度中的深层次矛盾也日益凸现。其中,税收制度中的税源与税收收入背离问题尤其值得关注。本文以民族地区为视角,研究地区税源与税收收入存在的背离现象,并对这种背离带来的问题进行分析,以之为基础,提出相应的解决思路和政策建议。     

海峡两岸所得税制度差异对消除两岸重复课税的影响

大陆与台湾所得税制在有关纳税人的居民身份确认和所得来源地认定标准、所得税税基确定、税收征管方式以及境外所得税抵免等方面,彼此的规定存在差异.这些差异在一定程度和范围影响到两岸各自单边规定的境外所得税抵免制度适用于消除两岸所得重复课税的实际效果.准确地认识两岸税制间的这些差异和不同,有助于两岸在将来可能进行的税收协调安排中采取有效的协调措施解决问题.     

国际税收竞争对我国税收优惠制度选择的影响

在经济全球化的今天,虽然有协调国际税收的必要,但国际税收竞争不可避免。同时,入世后,我们还应关注国际税制发展的新动向,适时调整我国的税收优惠制度,使其在WTO框架下良性运作,促进我国经济的发展。本文分析了国际税收竞争的正负效应,并给出了OECD关于有害税收竞争的规定。在具体分析我国税收优惠形式的基础上指明了它目前的缺陷,对未来我国税收优惠选择提出几点看法。     

深化农村税费改革，激活农村经济

农村税费改革是减轻农民负担和深化农村改革的重大举措,它是一项“民心工程。当前农村税费改革中存在一些问题,亟待解决。我们要强化改革意识,搞好政策宣传和业务培训工作,依法行政,转变职能,搞好服务,深化农村税费改革,激活农村经济。     

‘Place’ Construction: innovative reworking of fiction in recent Chinese films

How can film become a tool of ‘conservation of remembrance’ and be a part of rescuing and rebuilding of cultural and communal memories? Taking a cue from recent ecologically oriented debate on modernity, this paper will focus on memories through films on rural localities that intently counter the trauma of urban migration and dislocation in and around local ‘dwellings’. By looking at recent Chinese films like Dai Sijie's Little Chinese Seamstress and Huo Jianqi's Postmen in the Mountains, I discuss the directors' emotive re-imaging of local and folk architecture and landmarks so as to dispel feelings of displacement resulted from frenzied urban booming, and posit an emotive ‘embedding’ linking urban migrants to their nostalgic home dwellings. These visual narratives consciously negotiate over the emotive terrains between memoirs of local landscape and nagging issues of poverty and backwardness, between tourist exoticism and ‘emotion pictures’, between progress and preservation, and between the lure of global consumer culture and the beckoning of local and nascent ‘dwellings’.     

Representation without Taxation: political changes in Chinese authoritarian regimes

The question of why some authoritarian regimes choose to incorporate institutions of democracy such as village elections into their governing systems remains largely unanswered. As a typical case of a resilient authoritarian state that implements democracy in its villages, China has provided an invaluable case for researchers to study. Current theories focus on the influence of political elites and rural forces separately. Insightful as they are, these theories are invalid as an explanation of the variation of local governance in China across time and thus are incomplete. It should be recognized that central fiscal strategies have great effects on local governance. Specifically, if the central government largely relies upon fiscal revenue from rural areas, it has to expand its bureaucracy to the countryside to extract revenue. In contrast, if it does not rely on the rural areas for revenue, the central government will establish local democracy in the countryside. This hypothesis is historically reflected in the authoritarian regimes led by the Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China. As opposed to the familiar story about representation through taxation, the logic of representation without taxation seems to be the case in China.     

Villains,Victims and Aspiring Proprietors: framing ‘land-losing villagers’ in China's strategies of accumulation

This paper examines how debates in the media are providing the discursive conditions for, and thereby giving impetus to, diverse strategies of ‘so-called primitive accumulation’ in China. Taking as its empirical referent Chinese news and journal articles on land enclosure, the paper analyzes three frames in which policy entrepreneurs craft varying class positions for land-losing villagers. Grounded in different ontological premises, problem diagnoses and recommendations centering on the adoption of either a statist, neo-collective or liberal rural land regime, and backed up by evaluations of local policy experiments, the frames illustrate the diversity of ideational, political and institutional configurations that could facilitate the separation of peasant producers from the land, place land-losing villagers in different relationships with the state and capital, and sustain accumulation. In foregrounding these debates over land-losing villagers' future class positioning, the paper aims to offer a corrective to the historical determinism implicit in contemporary analyses that characterize enclosure in China as simply one national manifestation of homogenous, global neo-liberal projects of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ or ‘gangster capitalism’.     

Business‐Government Relations in Industrializing Rural China: A principal‐agent perspective

This paper explains why rural enterprises prosper in the post-Mao reform era. Based on a case study of Shaanxi province, the paper argues that the institutional arrangements in rural China under economic reforms are conducive to sustained economic growth because the principal‐agent problem is alleviated in two dimensions. First, the interests of local government officials and enterprises overlap. Prompted by the fiscal pressures on local governments as a result of the fiscal reforms, particularly the 1994 tax-assignment reform, local governments are eager to promote local industrial growth. Apart from absorbing rural surplus labour and contributing to the provision of communal welfare to local residents, rural enterprises provide local governments with tax and non-tax revenues to finance their expenditure obligations. In return, local governments provide preferential aid to their enterprises in the form of tax and credit privileges. Second, the principal‐agent problem is abated by a closer effort-and-reward link for the various parties involved in the operation of rural enterprises.