On Oct 28, 2015, SPEA successfully held the House Property Tax Reform Seminar. This meeting was presided by Professor Fu Wenlin, while the Speakers were Professor Hou Yilin from Syracuse University, US, Professor Pang Fengxi from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and Vice president Yao Lingzhen, Professor Hu Yijian, Professor Zhu Weiqun, and Professor Chen Jie from SUFE. China Business News was also invited to join the communication. The experts and scholars exchanged their opinions on the key issues and hot topics on House Property Tax Reform.
The meeting began with Professor Yao Lingzhen’s keynote speech on Effect Evaluation and innovation Research on Shanghai House Property Tax. Professor Yao demonstrated her research from the perspectives of pilot effect, reform objective, and implementation focus, and she proposed that House Property Tax Reform should focus on the objective and push forward step by step. In more details, the recent objective is to refrain speculation, the mid-term objective is to promote equity, and the long-term objective is to perfect Property Tax System and increase local income.
Professor Hou Yilin promoted that we should push forward House Property Tax in an active and steady step, we should considerate equality to the largest extend, the collection subject should be county governments, and it’s better to implement as soon as possible. He also introduced the detailed taxation elements and raised the opinion in later communication that house property tax income should correspond with the expenditure on basic education, community health care, infrastructure, and public security. Professor Pang Fengxi from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law thought that tax source information and tax collection cooperation should be laid more emphasis and there are still many deficiencies in the tax reform. He also promoted the opinion that the tax base should be appraisal value instead of market value, and the tax income should be corresponded with some basic public service expenditure.
Professor Zhu Weiqun, started from the difficulties on House property Tax Legislation, pointed out that the tax reform should follow Ability to pay principle, equitable principle, and tax stability principle, and the main target is to increase local government income. He pointed out that the tax rate should considerate the expenditure and the expenditure should be used in inclusive public service. Professor Hu Yijian said that the controversy laid in whether right of use could be taxed and he raised detailed theoretical basis. In addition, he pointed out that the current tax reform should be comprehensive reform instead of single tax reform, and this provided a basis for structural tax cut. Professor Fu Wenlin thought that it’s difficult to correspond the tax income with the relative public service expenditure, to make up financial deficit with transfer payment would raise moral risk problem of local governments, and we should differential tax treatment, adopt progressive tax rate, and generally levied with low tax rate. Professor Chen Jie laid emphasis on personal risk and financial risk, especially the obviously unfair and cliff effect in the tax reform process. He also agreed with Spend-and-tax principle and pointed out that central government should further promote public service equalization.
After the speeches, the presented professors, young teachers, medias, and doctoral students had warm discusses on the existed problems and hot topics on current house property tax reform. They combined academic theories with current practice, and devoted to promote policy advice to deepening house property tax reform.
Editor: Jia Tinyue