The Research On The System Of Stamp Tax In The Republic Of China

Stable social environment is an important guarantee of the sustainable tax system. The stamp tax system was China's first attempt to introducing western tax system, which was an important symbol of transition from traditional Chinese tax system to the modern tax system. After the Opium War, traditional agriculture was destroyed, China was involved in the world capitalist market unwillingly, and these accelerated the pace of agricultural capitalism; Bureaucratic capitalism emerged as the times require, and the rise of national capitalism had also led to the development of commodity economy in China especially from1970s to1990s during which relatively stable social environment had brought the rare development opportunity to China's social economy. During this period, China's commodity economy had developed unprecedentedly. The Opium War led China into a semi colonial and semi feudal society, which thoroughly shattered the"extremely arrogant" fool's paradise, more and more persons of noble aspirations began to learn from the west to seek truth to save their country, thus financial theory which had been widely introduced into china has become the focus of their study. Due to the wide spread of western financial and tax theory in China, late Qing government was aware of the stamp tax was popular among western countries and highly effective, so in the process of developing new sources of taxes it was in favor of the stamp tax, and stamp tax had become the first western tax introduced in our country. The Qing government tried to run stamp tax in1903and1908respectively. However, at that time the genneral public can't bear the extremely heavy tax burden, and two trials aimed to collect money, establishing the new while without destorying the old, thus eventually the government lost the trust of the people, and failed to promote the stamp tax, only limited within relatively narrow areas, and many regions eventually had to suspend it. Until the Republic of China newly established, a lot of things waited to be rebuilt, the Beijing government decided to levy new taxes, stamp duty which had been prepared for a long time had been implemented, which was based on the "Stamp Tax Rules" of late Qing Dynasty and changed into "Stamp Tax Law (Draft)". After that, the government issued related laws and regulations which defined and complemented all aspects of the collection of stamp tax, thus established basic framework of Chinese stamp tax, after several amendments to make the tax system'more perfect, the stamp tax has developed in this period. But because of the turbulent political situation, the warlord intensification, and local separatism, central regime changed constantly, finance slacked, it was difficult to collect stamp tax and due to the lack of government management and local powers enforced the law rudely, thus changed the nature of the stamp tax, so the people produced conflicting feeling and lost the good faith in tax payment, resulting in the poor performance of the levy of stamp tax.The tax guide's correct or not is the key factor to the healthy development of the tax system. After the Nanjing national government was founded, as a result of the implementation of a series of positive financial policy, modern industry developed unprecedentedly. But good times don't last long, the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war interrupted a new round of economic growth trend since1936. The majority of the coastal industrial area and Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan and other developed agricultural areas had been controled by the Japanese and these areas became the target of the political and economic exploitation of the Japanese imperialists, thus the national industry went bankrupt quickly. Because the Nanjing National Government unified, the work of print and collection and further rectified the collection of the stamp tax and other serious problems, the levy of stamp tax had been effectively ensured. At the same time, stamp tax system in this period had also been greatly improved, such as the recovery of concession of stamp tax in accordance with the legislative process of territorial sovereignty, to revise the "Stamp Acf" and the establishment of a fair and reasonable principle of tax law, etc. But the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war had interrupted the tax collection and management work which just achieved obvious good results. The occupation of coastal industrial and commercial areas decreased the stamp tax sharply, with military cost fast growth, forced the national government into wartime finance stage to amend "Stamp Tax Law" many times, to expand the range of decals vouchers, to adjust and increse modestly the tax rate and to increase penalties. In addition the soaring prices, inflation, although the stamp tax revenue had increased, the development of industry and commerce was badly destroyed. After the anti-Japanese War, due to the outbreak of the civil war, the just recovered Chinese economy had fallen into disorder again. Military retreat brought a surge of military cost. The national government had been unable to eradicate the fiscal deficit problem, so it had to rack its brains for fiscal deficit to issue a large number of domestic debt, currency and gold yuan, to borrow and also to pursue the wartime tax policy, of which,"stamp act" had been revised5times4years, which is the important manifestation of accumulating wealth. The purpose is to expand the source of tax revenue, improve tax rate, increase penalties, thus eventually the stamp duty completely changed from"good tax"to "heavy tax". Thus, the stamp tax system has undergone the initial development stage and gradually perfect, then final essential transformation in the late Republic of China and interrupted with the national government regime collapse.The economic and social development of a country is the basis of the choice of the tax system, is the driving force of development of changes of the tax system, and is the decisive factor in the direction changes of the tax system. Therefore, the revision of tax system should be based on the degree of social economic development as reference, and the tax system must be compatible with the national economic situation, and it can not go beyond the objective economic condition to set or reform tax system. Looking at the development history of the Republic of China stamp tax system, the introduction of its own tax system had no ground for blame, because stamp tax itself had the advantage of "collecting small amount but accumulating large amounf" and the source of stamp tax was ensured due to the frequent exchanges among people promoted by the commodity economy. But there was a big problem in the late Republic of China government tax direction, the Nanjing national government frequently revised the"Stamp Tax Act" beyond the social economy, thus made the business people unbearable and refuse to pay frequently. What's more, there were lots of disadvantages among the draft of the tax, for instance, during the draft of tax, the government didn't act strictly according to the legislative procedure, and the absence of people's extensive participation and too much mandatory administrative legislation, thus illustrated the interruption of the late Republic of China stamp tax system was mainly due to too much interference in the process of setting the tax system by the government.At the same time, in the promotion process of stamp tax system, there were many contradictions between central and local governments, because the long-standing abuses reflected these contraditions, especially at the time the downward trend of the property ownership had appeared, and local forces imposed resistance towards the enforecement of the tax, which can hardly be avoided. All along, the central control of local finance strength was too strong and put the provincial finance into the subsidiary role of central finance, so the provincial fiscal revenue shrinked rapidly, but also gave the local too much autonomy, which led to the provincial public finance can not control the local tax, resulting in tax game of central and local, the local failed to observe and enforce the tax law often. In addition, due to lack of effective management of tax collection, the ills of apportion occurred often, the nature of stamp tax transformed seriously from "good tax"to "heavy tax". However, no ground for blame was the period of the Republic of China, the stamp tax collection and management in some extent had improved, such as the implementation and promotion of simplification of the tax, through a variety of channels running the collection contest in the entire tax system, which was still more advanced method even in today and had a geat role in creating good tax environment. These will be beneficial enlightenment to our country's future stamp tax reform, and will make us more aware of the feasibility and rationality of the tax law, and actively promote the "tax system" reform, to further deepen the internal reform of tax collection and management system.