First, the reform of taxes and fees is an important measure that is necessary at present and conforms to the overall direction of China's reform, but it is not appropriate to mention the "radical solution". Generally speaking, this reform of "combining taxes and fees and returning" is still another round of countless similar reforms in the history of our country, that is, it still belongs to the restructuring within the traditional framework. It is far from the agricultural tax system in modern society or developed market economy society.

Modern tax system has many characteristics, and its essence is nothing more than two:

First, eliminate the color of "identity tribute" and implement the tax law without identity on the basis of equal rights of citizens. Regardless of income tax, asset tax and inheritance tax, there should be certain rules. Income tax is the most important thing for individual citizens. Progressive income tax rate and low income tax exemption line are common practices in modern society. But according to this principle, a considerable number of farmers in China should hardly be taxed. According to the current tax and fee reform policy, after the reform, agricultural tax and specialty tax still account for more than 15% of farmers' income, which is still "backward progressive" and status compared with citizens' income tax obligations. Mr. Feng Lu of Peking University put forward the theory of "farmers' tax exemption", arguing that the income of the first farmer can't reach the income tax threshold, and the second agricultural situation makes the land become a means of social security from "capital" and can't be the object of capital tax. His statement may be too idealistic, but it is logical. We may not be able to do this yet, but we must be aware that as long as the existing tax system can't treat urban and rural residents equally in the face of a unified progressive tax rate, we can't say that our tax reform has "cured the root cause".

Second, the more important foundation of modern tax system is the principle of the unity of taxpayers' rights and obligations. The so-called "no representation, no tax" can be said to be the most important starting point of modernization. The earliest parliaments in Britain, France and other countries were not based on any democratic political ideas, but only because the king had to negotiate with the "big taxpayers" on tax issues (later, with the development of democracy, they became representatives of all citizens who have obligations to the country). It is also the taxpayer recognition formed on the basis of "no representation, no tax payment" that makes modern countries have stronger tax legitimacy and greater actual tax collection ability than traditional countries. The essence of tax payment is the relationship between citizens and the state. On the surface, it is a financial concept, but in fact it is a political category. This tax reform puts forward the principle of "one thing, one discussion" and villagers' autonomy on the issue of community public welfare charges, which is actually based on this. However, there is still a long way to go on the issue of "national tax on imperial grain". In the final analysis, the "radical cure" of individual tax reform depends on the breakthrough of political system reform.

It must be emphasized that the above two points are based on the principle of equal treatment between urban and rural citizens, and do not involve the issue of "industry feeding agriculture" or the state "protecting" farmers to help the countryside. In developed countries, including the United States, which claims to implement a free economy and opposes the European welfare system, farmers are a specially protected group of citizens. In addition, economists generally believe that farmers will be in a weak position in the "fair market" where formal rights are treated equally because of high transaction costs, large natural risks, long production cycle and "cobweb impact" caused by the fact that the elasticity of discrete supply and consumption is less than that of supply. Farmers in China have never faced the problem of striving for care (I'm afraid it is difficult to take care of them with such a large proportion of farmers), but the problem of reducing discrimination. Farmers in China avoid "feedback" but seek less, not "protection" but gain. "Equal treatment of formal rights" is a dream, which has aroused protests from farmers in developed countries.

Second, as far as technology is concerned, in addition to the trap of "Huang Zongxi's Law" I mentioned earlier, we should pay attention to the following aspects in this tax and fee reform:

1, the feasibility of "percentage tariff". The so-called tithe tax, fifteen tax and thirty tax in the history of our country are all approximate estimates of the total tax revenue at that time. In practice, because the country can't verify the farmers' output and income, it is generally only levied according to the "hard index" (ding, mouth, household and mu), and at most ding and mu are roughly divided into "three-class nine regulations" and "five-class version". Moreover, due to the poor management of village officials, this classification work is easily distorted, causing greater problems. Therefore, there is a trend in history that "fifth-class households" and "ninth-class households" gradually fade away and are replaced by more unified standards. Therefore, once the tax system was reformed at that time, in order to avoid tax loss control, absolute quantity control was usually adopted. For example, the "two tax laws" in the late Tang Dynasty stipulated that the actual tax amount was limited over the years, and the principle of the integration of land and mu in the Qing Dynasty was based on the quota in the last year of Kangxi ("never increase taxes in the golden age"). However, the "two 7.5%" in this tax and fee reform is a relative indicator. At present, the statistics of "farmers' net income" are extremely inaccurate, and under the situation that "officials give figures and figures give officials", it is useless to have only relative indicators without absolute control.

2. Related to the above is the taxation of farmers' non-agricultural income. At present, the so-called farmers' burden in China is actually mainly the burden of serving farmers, especially those who grow grain (or other major agricultural products). However, farmers in areas with highly developed "township enterprises", such as southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and even suburbs and urban areas with high differential land rent income, do not have such problems. The basic taxes stipulated in this tax reform are agricultural tax and specialty tax, and the actual collection is mostly calculated according to the population and the number of acres, which makes the burden concentrated on those who farm and grow grain more serious. At present, this problem has been reflected in the pilot projects in Anhui and Fujian.

This is also an old problem of China's tax system. Due to the lack of standardized bookkeeping, turnover declaration and verification in China's economic activities, especially in rural areas, ancient taxation often had the problem of "forcing the people to the end". In some places in the Qing dynasty, in order to make businessmen bear some burdens, they were persuaded or even forced to buy land, so as to avoid "the son of ten thousand gold has no land, but he will never lose a penny in the country", which is certainly not the fundamental solution.

It should be said that China has always pursued the policy of attaching importance to agriculture and restraining business, and has never been motivated to be kind to businessmen and farmers in tax law. However, under the traditional social conditions, it will never be possible to form a reasonable progressive income tax system. Therefore, on the one hand, the imperial court often implemented unreasonable extortion, monopoly and imprisonment systems in the industrial and commercial fields, which hindered the normal development of private industry and commerce, on the other hand, it always followed the tradition of "backward progressive taxation" that was not conducive to farmers. Formed the so-called "today's law is inferior to business, and business is rich in business" (according to Qin: in fact, businessmen with powerful backgrounds are rich, and for civilian businessmen, the policy of restraining business at that time was not a joke), and today's law is more expensive than agriculture, while agriculture is poor. Especially since the Song and Ming Dynasties, the subject of taxation in China has shifted from poll tax to land tax, and this problem is more serious.

The disadvantages of "backwardness and progress" not only make the burden of farmers heavier than that of citizens, but also the burden of grain farmers is heavier than that of service industry and commerce, and the burden of service industry and commerce is heavier than that of pure tenant farmers. Nowadays, with the expansion of many star cities, land prices have soared. For example, many "farmers" in Luohu District of Shenzhen have become rich just because of their location. They are no longer engaged in agriculture or commerce. Many people only know gambling and keeping mistresses, and taxes have no regulating effect on them. Of course, it is by no means that soaring land prices will benefit farmers under any circumstances. More commonly, due to the vague land rights, as soon as the land price rises, the land will be taken away, the land with rights will be "expropriated" and "sold" to the rich, and the location income will also flow into the pockets of private (although not farmers). At that time, Marx advocated abolishing absolute land rent through state-owned land and nationalizing differential land rent. On the contrary, in China, which does not recognize private ownership of land, the high absolute land rent (which can be understood as farmers' land burden in reality) makes farmers abandon their land seriously, while the high differential land rent (which is mainly the benefit brought by regional appreciation of land or other non-investment appreciation in reality) is pocketed, which also makes monopoly rentiers rich and "land speculation". On the contrary, it is not as progressive as some countries with private ownership of land.

In the case that the modern income tax system for all citizens in urban and rural areas cannot be realized for the time being, the relative standard of "a few percent of farmers' income" is of little significance, and there is a "progressive" drawback in calculating certificates according to the quota of per mu. What should I do? The fundamental way out is the radical cure mentioned above. But from a technical point of view, it is not without room for improvement. It may be a way to change the "mu tax" into "land tax" and implement a progressive land tax rate while retaining the country's final land acquisition right. Land price is subject to "self-reporting for public discussion", and "self-reporting" has interest constraints: over-reporting land price, tax loss, under-reporting land price and land acquisition loss, and farmers will choose the most favorable reporting method. The total land tax is apportioned according to the land price. No matter how to report, the total amount remains unchanged and the national interests are guaranteed. At the same time, the concept of "land price" replaced the natural concept of "land mu", which also provided conditions for further land system reform.

Third, it has been generally accepted that the current tax and fee reform cannot be carried out in isolation, so it has become common sense that the tax reform is accompanied by the reform of the grassroots political system. It is very necessary to withdraw villages and merge towns, streamline institutions and make village affairs democratic. However, the reform of community public affairs is not the same as the reform of the relationship between the state and citizens. At present, there are many grass-roots organizations in rural areas in China, with many personnel and large expenses, which is indeed the reason for the heavy burden on farmers. However, this coexists with the chaotic organizational structure, paralysis of public affairs and serious shortage of public goods supply in many rural communities. Before the reform, rural organizations in most areas of China were based on "production teams". At that time, the "team" was roughly the same as the traditional rural natural village, that is, the so-called "village-team integration", and the function of community public organizations was quite developed (the disadvantages of the system were another matter). After the reform, the "team" is basically empty, and the "villagers' group" changed from the original production team is often useless, while the "administrative village" changed from the original production team has become the new foundation of rural organizations, and its institutions and powers have been greatly expanded, especially after the land management right has been delegated to households, the land control right has been taken over from the production team in You Ran. However, the "administrative village" is not the * * * identical body naturally formed by local interpersonal relationships, but is designated by the state based on management needs. The public function of community is weak, and the color of "national broker" is strong. Except for some rich areas with developed township enterprises and active village economy, the power of "administrative village" in the vast rural areas is basically a simple "end of state power". In the words of farmers, their function is to ask their superiors for food and money, but the community public welfare function is very poor (due to the lack of community credibility, sometimes the community public welfare projects called by superiors are also regarded as invitations from superiors, which increases the burden on farmers). However, the state does not recognize it as a grass-roots political power in jurisprudence, but stipulates it as a villagers' autonomous organization, which is supported by farmers. This state of "working for the country without the support of the country and being supported by the villagers is not beneficial to the village" leads to the embarrassing situation of village-level organizations, and the contradiction between cadres and the masses is serious. Village cadres tend to seek their own interests and become a negative interest class that is perfunctory and divorced from the villagers.

In recent years, village-level democracy is of great significance in promoting democratic consciousness, but it has not fundamentally solved the functional conflict between "the end of political power" and "community autonomy". As far as village governance is concerned, it is not necessarily the best choice to establish an institution that is both an autonomous organization and a political terminal with conflicting functions according to the standard procedure of "national democracy" in an "administrative village" that is different from a natural village and an acquaintance society. I think the future rural organization model should be:

In natural villages (not administrative villages), it is good to change the current state of disintegration and develop villagers' autonomy. But as long as the organization cost is low, the community governance is effective, and farmers accept it, outsiders don't have to change it forcibly. Autonomous organizations do not eat "official meals" and are responsible to the villagers. Whether they need or not, how much support they need and even public welfare expenses are all based on the principle of villagers' consent, and the external standard of "a few percent" is of little significance. It is impossible for a democratic country to appoint an autonomous person with the above will, and at the same time, it is not necessary to care too much about whether the procedures for producing an autonomous person are "standardized" below, as long as the rule of law is used to ensure that these organizations do not violate human rights. For example, the ethnic parliament can handle the general public affairs within the ethnic group, but it is not allowed to set up courts without permission, infringe on the basic civil rights within the ethnic group, and not to fight with foreign organizations. -In fact, these restrictions have no logical connection with "clan" and "non-clan". Even organizations formed by "normative democracy" cannot infringe upon citizens' legitimate rights on the grounds of "majority decision". Modern democratic system cannot be based on consanguineous organization, but it can't be based on the forced abolition of consanguineous organization, otherwise the forced "division" and the prohibition of "ethnic residence" of legalists in Qin Dynasty became the most radical democratic policy. What modern democracy wants to prevent is the violation of human rights by "national rights", but this is not because "national rights" are more evil than other forms of public power, but only because any form of abuse of public power in modern society should be prevented. Modern society should be clear about "group rights": the principle of freedom of passage in the personal field, whether it is blood or blood, democracy or autocracy, public power should not violate this freedom. Democracy or majority decision principle is popular in the field of public affairs, that is, the affairs of community public affairs depend on the majority of the community (whether related by blood or not) or the agents authorized by the majority, and the affairs of state public affairs depend on the majority of the country or the agents elected by the majority of the country. As long as these principles are implemented, there is no need to worry that the so-called villagers' autonomy will encourage clan tendencies.

Cancel the "administrative villages" outside the natural villages and divide the towns into smaller ones (different from the current idea of merging villages into townships). Institutions at the township level should be the end of political power in democratic countries, not autonomous organizations; It is an institution, not a huge first-level government; The "township official" is a affairs officer, not an administrative officer. The civil service system is not an election system, but is supported by state finance rather than farmers. In particular, the country of education should earnestly shoulder the responsibilities stipulated in the Compulsory Education Law, and farmers should not be allowed to "raise education"-the latter is one of the reasons for the current "farmer burden problem". As for professional institutions or agricultural service departments such as "seven hospitals and eight stations", they should either implement enterprise, seek survival from the market and seek development from competition. In other words, as a public institution that needs subsidies, it is allocated vertically by the finance (that is, it is decoupled from the so-called "township finance"), so that farmers cannot bear the responsibility of subsidies. Under the above principles, the reduced number of "township officials" who eat "imperial grain" and run state affairs shall be appointed by the government through examination. The controversial issue of "township elections" in the past no longer exists. Farmers' democratic rights at this level are mainly civil rights such as freedom of association, and they have the ability to negotiate with the government through organizations such as peasant associations.

Democratic elections should be the basis of political power at or above the county level. This involves other aspects of political system reform, so I won't go into details here. In short, natural villages are autonomous, administrative villages are abolished, and rural farmers' associations elect political power to civil servants and counties. In order to realize the combination of tradition and modernization, farmers' democratic rights and national administrative ability.

Fourth, in recent years, the policy orientation of "strong labor and weak support" in fiscal revenue deserves reflection. Since the mid-1990s, there have been voices at home and abroad calling on China to strengthen its "national absorptive capacity". It advocated centralized finance, increased the ratio of two (the ratio of national fiscal revenue to GDP and the ratio of central fiscal revenue to national fiscal revenue), and developed transfer payment, which was reasonable at that time when the "vassal economy" was developed and the central government was in financial difficulties. Even today, there are still "princes" in the provincial economy, and it may be reasonable to concentrate moderately on the relationship between the central government and the provinces. However, in recent years, except for a few developed areas, the financial difficulties at the county and village levels have become increasingly serious, but the central fiscal revenue has increased at a high speed beyond expectations. Last year, the central government increased revenue by 200 billion yuan, but it was difficult to pay wages in most counties. There are hundreds of thousands of village financial liabilities and millions of township financial liabilities everywhere. In the end, these financial holes have to be filled with the blood and sweat of farmers. The deterioration of farmers' burden cannot be said to have nothing to do with this.

Supporters of "being strong and weak" like to emphasize that the developed countries are higher than the underdeveloped countries in the world, and now they are higher than in the past. This proves that we should raise these two ratios, especially the "retained" ratio of the central government. They also said that the disintegration of many unified countries in the world and even the chaos of the last dynasty in China's history were all caused by this decline. I think this is too hasty. Many nationalities in Europe were feudal lords in pre-modern times, and there was no "central finance". The unified nation-state is formed synchronously with the modernization process, which can be said to be accompanied by the growth of the central financial power. On the other hand, the disintegration of the unified country is due to the lack of "central absorption capacity", which is hard to convince.

In China, which has a tradition of centralization since ancient times, it is doubtful whether the proportion of national fiscal revenue to GDP is lower than that of modern countries (there are indeed foreign sinologists who say that according to the "positive supply of money and grain" recorded in historical books, the burden on farmers in traditional China is much lighter than that in pre-modern Europe, but as mentioned above, it is a common phenomenon that the "positive supply" of miscellaneous factions is much higher than that in ancient China, so this statement is not credible). The ratio of central fiscal revenue to national fiscal revenue is generally higher than that of modern countries, especially at the end of the dynasty (for example, the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty was indeed an era when the imperial court's "absorption capacity" shrank and the government was in debt of billions), but it was generally a period when central fiscal revenue accounted for a high proportion of national fiscal revenue. It was precisely when the court extorted money that not only made the people miserable, but even local governments lost patience with the central government that the dynasty collapsed and society occurred.

Take the Ming Dynasty as an example. During the Hongzhi period when politics was relatively clear in the middle of Ming Dynasty, the total amount of summer tax, autumn grain, rice and wheat was 267.993 million stone, of which "shipped out" 15034 thousand stone (turned over to the central household department), accounting for 56%; "Retained" (dominated by local government) 1 1.764 million stones, accounting for only 44%. Since 1, the proportion of the central government has been on the rise. In the six years of Wanli, the national summer tax and autumn grain was * * * 26.638 million stones, of which 15287 thousand stones were shipped out, accounting for 57.4%; There are1135.438+00 million stones, accounting for only 42.6%. This "ratio of central fiscal revenue to national fiscal revenue" is much higher than that of most modern developed countries. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the "three salaries plus factions" rose, all of which belonged to the central finance, further increasing the proportion of central revenue in the national financial plate. In Huang Zongxi's words, it has reached the point where "counties and counties in the world can't afford to eat one tenth, and nine tenths of them transport the capital". Which developed country has such a high proportion of central finance today? It was under such circumstances that the Ming Dynasty collapsed.

The degree of fiscal centralization in Qing Dynasty was even greater than that in Ming Dynasty. When the Qing court was first established, in order to appease people's hearts, it was stipulated that the central and local governments should each take 50% of the state's fiscal revenue, that is, "in the early years of Shunzhi, money and grain should be shipped and saved in half." But in fact, the measures taken by the central government are far more than these. In the peaceful years of the early Qing Dynasty, in the 24th year of Kangxi, the 2nd year of Yongzheng and the 18th year of Qianlong, the amount of money and grain collected by the whole country was 28 1.92 million, 30.28 million and 30 1.33 million respectively, of which 77.82%, 76.79% and 78.77% were collected. During the Jiaqing period in the middle of Qing Dynasty, the initial part of Xiaoding's total money and grain increased to 8 1.56%, and the Qing court declined. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the proportion had risen to 85.65% during the Guangxu period, and the Qing court was going to die.

Before the Anti-Japanese War in the Republic of China, the central fiscal revenue mainly depended on customs duties and salt taxes, while the land tax was placed under the provincial finance, and the land tax surcharge was generally dominated by the county finance. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, one of the first financial measures taken by the government was to bring the land tax revenue into the central finance, which strengthened the central government's "absorption" of manpower and material resources other than land tax in the Kuomintang-controlled areas, so a large number of people with poor quality were appointed to expand rural political power. Although the wartime economy has understandable reasons, it has played an important role in accelerating the deterioration of the relationship between the Kuomintang regime and local governments, with the people, especially with farmers. Anyone familiar with land reform knows that when farmers complained at that time, most of them were not aimed at land rent exploitation, but at the Kuomintang's exorbitant taxes and levies, Latin bribery and the sins of Jiabao rural personnel.

Of course, the above statistics are based on legal fiscal revenue. If illegal expropriation is taken into account, the central government is unlikely to take such a high proportion of national financial resources. In fact, even if 100% of the legitimate fiscal revenue is "shipped out", local officials with the right to use will not starve to death, and may not even take less than before. But in an absolute sense, this does not mean that the central government has not taken so much, but that local governments have taken far more than that. In other words, this shows that the actual burden on farmers often exceeds the expectations of the central authorities, because "cadres are strong and branches are weak." It can be believed that the rulers of past dynasties, whether wise or ignorant, probably did not intentionally abuse the people for fun and make fun of their country. They usually just think that the court will take more and the place will take less, and the total burden of the people will not increase much-probably the same as the report they have heard. However, common sense tells us that the "drawing" of the imperial court itself requires a cost. It is impossible for the emperor to send an imperial envoy from Qian Qian to face the people directly, and the income of the imperial court will be collected by local institutions after all. Local institutions, like the imperial court, take the attribute of "economic man" as the interest unit and tend to maximize their own interests within the limits of power. The more the imperial court collects, the more it needs "state brokers" or grants more rights to local "state brokers", and this more strengthened right of state brokers can better realize its own best interests in the case of insufficient rights of taxpayers. Because the imperial court has almost shipped out legal attachments such as official tax and even consumer envy, it is difficult not to turn a blind eye to other "income-generating" of local brokers, which leads to the growing disadvantages of "limited supply and endless collection".

Therefore, although "separation" is not the root cause of "horizontal sign", the lack of "stay" has indeed contributed to the proliferation of "horizontal sign" in many cases. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, many insightful theories talked about this:

"For local use, one is still not enough ... They have nothing. Why should they punish the greed of officials? ..... food without capital, why ban collectors? " seven

"The retained funds were cut, so the counties were constrained, greedy and unscrupulous, and they were sent to the public treasury, which was hopeless. All the disadvantages began." eight

"Money has a place to use, minus one point is minus one point. Local officials will not allow themselves, so they have to send people, not greedy for profits, which will only increase infinite hardships. " nine

Too many shipments and insufficient reserves have also led to chaos such as loan payment, shifting other expenses, financial circles and fraud. At the beginning of Qing dynasty, the minister of the Ministry of Housing reported too many shipments, which was "bound to be used for confession". 10 Even Emperor Kangxi saw that all the remaining funds were paid off, resulting in "there is no remaining funds in the prefecture, so the positive item was moved, which is a big source of the deficit". He pointed out that the so-called "deficit" phenomenon of high nominal fiscal revenue and insufficient actual available financial resources was of course one of the reasons. But the strange thing is: "there is an incorruptible governor in the local area, and the subordinate officials are in deficit. What else can we say?" Kangxi believes that the reason is that these "honest" officials are too active in handling "resignation", so that they turn over the loans and remove other expenses, which leads to the great disadvantage of circular finance, that is, the book income is large and the actual financial resources are scarce. He stressed that this disadvantage is more harmful to finance than corruption. 1 1 To be fair, aren't we in a similar situation now?

Some of our theorists often talk about developed countries and Roosevelt when advocating strong support. They forget that other people's government functions, restraint mechanisms and operating environment are very different from ours, and say a harsh word: under our institutional conditions, it is likely that they are not studying Roosevelt, but Emperor Chongzhen. Of course, I don't advocate unlimited fiscal decentralization. Both Roosevelt and Thatcher had many basic institutional premises. Under our existing institutional conditions, it is impossible to build a "welfare state" by relying on "strong cadres and weak branches" and a "free market" by relying on a client economy. Maybe it's time for us to get rid of the pure financial argument about "centralization" or "decentralization".