China's Local-Central Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations

For a large country like China, the handling of intergovernmental fiscal relations must create compatible incentives to central and local governments. China initially created a fiscal management system characterized by tax sharing in 1994, basically meeting the needs of its socialist market economic system. Yet further improvements must be made to the assignment of administrative authority and expenditure responsibilities, revenue allocation and the fiscal transfer payment system. In handling intergovernmental fiscal relations, great attention must be given to the system＇s stability to give play to its function of incentives and restraints. China must create a hierarchical fiscal management system in line with its modern fiscal system. According to the requirements of this system, China should further standardize the division between administrative authority and expenditure responsibilities, standardize the division of government revenues, formalize a fiscal transfer payment system, and develop a hierarchical fiscal management system encompassing the sharing of tax, rents and profits.

Intergovernmental Vertical Fiscal Relations Reform and Grassroots-Level Government’s Finance Guarantee:Based on Quasi-Natural Experimental Analysis

Grassroots-level government’s financial capability is crucial to the performance of financial functions of the whole country.How to adjust the intergovernmental vertical fiscal relations in order to improve grassroots-level government’s finance situation is important for accelerating the establishment of a modern fiscal system.In recent years,Province-Directly-Governing-County(PGC)fiscal reform has been an important attempt to straighten out vertical fiscal relations between governments,and thus has made it possible for studying the effects of vertical fiscal relations reform on grassroots-level government’s finance based on quasi-natural experimental analysis.Therefore,this article empirically analyzes the PGC fiscal reform based on nationwide county-level data applying Propensity Score Matching with Difference-in-Difference Method(PSM-DID),in order to investigate the effect of the reform on county governments’disposable revenue and identify the influence path.The results indicate that PGC fiscal reform has a significant effect on promoting fiscal disposable revenue of county governments.Furthermore,we find that the reform increased upper-government transfer payment more than county-level own revenue,which manifests the reform increase county governments’fiscal disposable revenue by means of restraining prefecture-level cities’from grabbing county-level transfer.

Research on the Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations of China in the Past 70 Years:Fiscal Decentralization in Evolution

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China,the Chinese scholars of finance theory have been sparing no effort on the theoretical research of intergovernmental fiscal relations in the past 70 years,with fiscal decentralization at the core.Although fiscal decentralization has a long history,the intergovernmental fiscal relations which use fiscal decentralization as the vehicle did not constitute an independent research topic in the early days of the People’s Republic of China.Later,fiscal decentralization was adopted and gradually flourished in China,once systematically explained as the target mode of intergovernmental fiscal relations,and even took the form of tax sharing system.In the new era of socialism with Chinses characteristics,the booming research on intergovernmental fiscal relations,adapted to the theoretical innovation of modern fiscal system,has contributed to coping with the changes of international and domestic economic situation in the new normal and to the sustainable fiscal development of China.

From Government to Enterprises:How Tax Sharing Interacts with Tax Rates

Tax sharing embodies central-local government fiscal relations and tax rates reflect government-market relations.Research on the interactions between tax sharing and tax rates helps uncover the effects of central-local fiscal relations on government-market relations.According to our study,China's flexible tax sharing and differential tax rates facing firms are two important typical facts;theoretical analysis discovered that effective corporate tax rates are influenced by local government preferences and tax sharing ratio;empirical analysis found that increasing CIT and VAT sharing ratios for governments at city and county levels led to the reduction of tax evasion and increase of effective tax rates.The above conclusions have revealed the unique mechanism of how government-market relations are influenced by fiscal system,explains the sources of differential tax rates facing Chinese firms,and provides reference for next-step fiscal reform.