China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament yesterday passed a law that is to levy specific environmental protection taxes on industry for the first time from 2018, as part of a renewed focus on fighting the country’s pollution woes.
Anger has risen in the world’s second-largest economy at the government’s repeated failure to tackle land, water and air pollution, with large parts of northern China enveloped in dangerous smog in recent days.
“Tax revenue is an important economic means to promote environmental protection,” the Chinese Ministry of Finance said in a statement.
The tax rate will be 1.2 yuan (US$0.17) per unit of atmospheric pollution, 1.4 yuan per unit of water pollution, 5 yuan per tonne of coal waste and 1,000 yuan per tonne of “hazardous waste.”
Industrial noise polluters would also be levied 350 yuan per month if they exceed limits by 1 to 3 decibels, 700 yuan for 4 to 6 decibels and 11,200 yuan per month for 16 decibels and more.
The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
China has not previously imposed any specific environmental taxes, and the new levy is to replace an earlier system of miscellaneous charges that are regarded as far too low to deter polluters.
“The core purpose [of the policy] is not to increase taxes, but is to improve the system, and encourage enterprises to reduce emissions — the more they emit the more they will pay, and the less they emit the less they will pay,” Chinese Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining (陳吉寧) said earlier this year.
The details of the new law have been fiercely contested by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Finance, State Taxation Administration and local governments, and has been subject to repeated delays.
Conflicts of interest have emerged as other departments worry about lost revenues once the previous system of emission discharge fees is abolished.
Some government researchers have also argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be included in the plans.
Jia Kang (賈康), the director of the Ministry of Finance’s Institute of Fiscal Science, this year said that the environmental tax proposals were far too conservative, with the tax rate per tonne of sulphur dioxide still much cheaper than paying for the equipment required to stop it entering the atmosphere.
He suggested that in order to avoid increasing the tax burden on firms, other business taxes should be cut and replaced by the environmental tax, which would give authorities a more powerful tool to force a firm to improve its environmental performance.
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