January 1 this year, China's first "green tax law" - "Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People's Republic of China" began to be implemented on the air pollutants, water pollutants, solid waste and noise of four types of pollutants, the sewage collected by the environmental protection department in the past Fee, now replaced by the tax department levied green taxes. What impact will this change bring to the enterprise and society? How to levy environmental taxes specifically? How to prepare for collection?

Few countries started levying in the 1970s, but the majority were introduced in the 1990s and the number of countries levied was increasing. The increase in countries that imposed carbon taxes became even more pronounced given concerns about climate change.
From the collection method, the majority of pollutant emissions from the amount of quotas imposed, but also according to the amount of inputs used.
According to local conditions to determine the amount of tax
Taxes are all left to the local finance, arousing the enthusiasm of local pollution control

In accordance with the principle of institutional shift and the requirements of local conditions, the environmental tax has adopted a dynamic adjustment mechanism of "determining the bottom line of the country and going where the local government can float" on the basis of determining the specific amount of tax.

To be specific, the tax law empowers the people's governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government to consider the carrying capacity of the environment, the current status of pollutant emissions and the requirements of economic and social development goals based on the current levying standards for discharge charges of air and water pollutants, Floating tax "to meet the actual needs of environmental governance in different regions.

The minimum tax amount stipulated by the Environmental Tax Law is: 1.2 yuan for each pollutant of air pollutant and 1.4 yuan for pollutant water pollutant; and the upper limit of tax amount is 10 times of the minimum standard.

In accordance with the tax law, provinces have introduced tax standards that are in line with the actual conditions in the region.

Taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region where environmental problems are more prominent as an example, Beijing has determined the applicable tax amount in this region according to the 10 times upper limit, that is, the applicable tax amount for air pollutants and water pollutants is 12 yuan and 14 yuan per pollution respectively; 8 times the minimum standard, identified the majority of Central Beijing 13 County water pollutants applicable taxes.

Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangxi, Shaanxi and other provinces have implemented the minimum standards, that is, each pollution equivalent was 1.2 yuan and 1.4 yuan.

The director of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Finance said that adopting the minimum value stipulated by the state mainly takes into consideration that the current economic and social development in Jiangxi is still underdeveloped and will help to promote innovation and development and transformation and upgrading of enterprises. In the future, it may be based on environmental quality indicators of the province and environmental protection The actual tax collection, according to legal procedures appropriate adjustments.

In order to promote the protection and improvement of the environment throughout the country and increase investment in environmental protection, the State Council decided that all environmental protection taxes should be used as local revenues. Earlier, the sewage charge imposed by the implementation of the central and local 1: 9 into the principle of income division.

In 2016, the revenue from sewage charges in Beijing was 613 million yuan, but the investment in air pollution control reached 16.56 billion yuan and the input in water resources protection reached 17.66 billion yuan, much higher than the amount of sewage charges.

Determine the tax standards from high, fully reflects the "who pollutes, who govern" principle, is conducive to strengthening the responsibility of the polluters.
Rigid enforcement of tax law enforcement
Corporate tax evasion will face up to five times the fine, or even bear criminal responsibility

From sewage charges to environmental taxes, by no means a simple name change, but from the system design to the full implementation of the full change.

Our law stipulates that if the tax evasion is determined by the enterprise, the tax authorities will recover the unpaid or underpaid taxes and late fees, and impose a fine of not less than 50% and not more than 5 times the corresponding taxes on them to form a criminal offense. Especially for listed companies, once the adverse news on tax revenue, will seriously affect the company's share price, higher costs of violating tax laws.

Not only that, from the "fee" to "tax" change, there is a huge institutional significance. Charges and taxes are all government acts of a kind of financial behavior. However, there are qualitative differences. Taxes of a tax nature should be turned into taxes, which helps regulate the government revenue system and optimize the fiscal revenue structure.

In terms of tax collection and administration, after the sewage charges have been changed into a green tax, the tax collection department has been changed from an environmental protection department to a tax authority. Since the environmental monitoring has considerable professionalism, it is a huge challenge to the tax department.

Fiscal, taxation and environmental protection departments should continue to follow up and analyze the effect of reform policies, especially in the first reporting period of environmental protection tax and the implementation of such important time nodes as six months and one year. According to the taxpayers' industry, scale, types of pollutant emissions, sources of pollution Standard and typical business type, etc., to analyze the effect of emission reduction in a multi-dimensional and accurate manner, provide support to the decision-making of the state environmental governance, and lay a solid foundation for further perfecting the environmental protection tax system.

Environmental tax levied on the business in the short term greater impact. In the long run, if enterprises can take timely response measures, they will make great contributions both in research and development of enterprises and in environmental protection in China.