Study on the Emission Reduction Effect of Environmental Protection Tax—An Empirical Study Based on the Change of Pollution Charge Standard in China?

This paper reflects the actual effect of China’s environmental protection tax by empirically analyzing the environmental effect of the emission fee, in order to provide reference for China’s environmental tax reform. Based on the traditional environmental “Kuznets” model, the factor of environmental tax is added to verify the effect of environmental governance of environmental tax. The results show that: 1) the improvement of sulfur dioxide emission charge standard can effectively inhibit industrial sulfur dioxide emission, which verifies the existence of environmental effect of pollution levy policies. 2) The improvement of sewage charge standard has better inhibitory effect on sulfur dioxide emission per unit GDP than on sulfur dioxide emission. 3) There is regional heterogeneity in the “emission reduction” effect of sulfur dioxide emission charges in the eastern, central and western regions of China. Pollutants should be taxed differently according to regional differences. 4) Economic growth and sulfur dioxide emission show an inverted “U” shape, China is still in the stage before the inflection point of EKC. Economic growth still takes environmental damage as the cost, and the “emission reduction” effect of technological progress is not ideal, which reveals the urgency of increasing technological development in the field of green environmental protection under the current situation.