Research On The Impact Of China’s Environmental Protection Tax Reform On Regional Pollution Emissions

Since the reform and opening up,China has focused on the rapid economic growth brought by industrial manufacturing and the continuous improvement of people’s material living standards,but in the long run,it has neglected environmental problems such as pollution emission and ecological damage.The rough economic development has led to serious ecological and environmental problems,which have destroyed the environment where people live happily and hindered the high quality and sustainable development of society,and will cause irreparable damage if left uninterrupted.The increasing occurrence of extreme weather events and the reduction of ecosystems is a constant reminder of the importance of protecting and restoring the environment,and the urgent need to reduce pollution emissions,improve environmental quality and promote the construction of ecological civilization.After embarking on the new journey of the14 th Five-Year Plan,China’s understanding of the construction of ecological civilization has reached a new height,and there are higher requirements for environmental protection,and the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China has been officially implemented since January 1,2018,which is the first taxation system in China to clarify pollution prevention and control,and is of great significance to China’s green tax system and ecological civilization construction.and the construction of ecological civilization is of great significance.The predecessor of the Environmental Protection Tax was the sewage charge,i.e.,the Environmental Protection Tax was set up based on the sewage charge as an improvement,but it was established as a government environmental regulation tool,which is more legal and regulatory compared to the sewage charge.The Environmental Protection Tax Law is implemented by raising funds for environmental pollution control through taxation and regulating individual pollutant emissions to reduce pollutant emissions and to protect and improve the ecological environment.However,the actual impact of environmental protection tax on local environmental pollution emission behaviors after the actual introduction of the tax needs to be confirmed.Therefore,this paper conducts a theoretical and empirical test of the environmental protection tax reform policy.Based on the Pyrrhic tax theory,externality theory and double dividend theory,this paper analyzes the relationship between environmental protection tax reform and regional pollution emission behavior,as well as the regulatory mechanism of local government’s scientific and technological investment and local legal system environment in this influence process.This is followed by a description of the current situation of pollutant emissions in China in the form of data from the overall national level and the regional level to illustrate the current environmental pollution situation in China from the reality.In the empirical part,from the perspective of environmental protection tax and fee differences,this paper takes whether the environmental tax and fee levy standard is adjusted upward as the policy impact point,divides 30 provinces in China into two types of regions,selects 289 local and municipal pollutant emission data in China from 2011 to2020 for compilation and analysis,and uses double difference model and propensity score matching to empirically test the pollution emission reduction of environmental protection tax and fee reform The results of the empirical analysis were verified.The results of the empirical analysis verified that the environmental protection tax and fee reform helps reduce regional pollution emissions.Considering the regional heterogeneity of east,central and west regions and whether the provincial and urban areas are coastal cities,it is found that the regional pollution reduction effect of environmental protection tax and fee reform policy is more significant in the east,central and non-coastal regions.The regulatory mechanism test finds that local government science and technology investment and legal institutional environment have positive regulatory effects on the regional pollution emission reduction effect of environmental protection tax and fee reform policy.Based on the above results,it shows that the environmental protection tax reform policy is effective on regional pollutant emissions,but it is still necessary to further optimize the environmental protection tax collection and management system,improve the environmental protection tax collection policy according to local conditions,enhance local scientific research investment,and improve the local legal system in order to improve the implementation effect of environmental protection tax and promote better green development in the region.