The main functions of China's fiscal policy are to promote economic growth, increase employment, stabilize prices and maintain the balance of international payments.
Characteristics of China's proactive fiscal policy: In June, the national fiscal revenue increased by 19.6% year-on-year. If the data in the next few months of this year are similar, the annual budget of 9.8% fiscal revenue growth will not fail, which is the most worrying issue of the Ministry of Finance.
Obviously, the difficulties are still great.
"The recent increase in fiscal revenue has rebounded, largely due to the increase in transfer consumption tax and the increase in some one-time income after the reform of refined oil taxes and fees." The Ministry of Finance's revenue and expenditure report in June pointed out that the contradiction between revenue and expenditure in the whole year is still very prominent, the foundation for the sustained growth of fiscal revenue is still not solid, and the expenditure momentum is not reduced.
Wang Yongjun, dean of the Institute of Finance and Economics of the Central University of Finance and Economics, told this reporter that if a large number of contingent liabilities and hidden liabilities are counted, the financial pressure is already very obvious. If the economy does not improve significantly, the future financial situation will be worrying and the fiscal space will become narrower and narrower.
In this regard, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee held a meeting on July 23rd, stressing that the difficulties and challenges faced should be fully estimated and the macro-policy orientation should not be changed.
Judging from the recent high-level repeated emphasis on proactive fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy, proactive fiscal policy is far from retirement. How to continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy has become a difficult problem for policy makers.
"The direction of the proactive fiscal policy remains unchanged, but it will be committed to structural adjustment." Zhu Baoliang, deputy director of the Economic Forecasting Department of the National Information Center, and many other experts said in an interview with the reporter of China Times that the "emergency" measures to maintain growth in the early stage have achieved initial results, and the next step will be to adjust the focus from "emergency" to "health".
The contradiction between income and expenditure is sharp.
The negative growth of tax revenue lasted from July 2008 to May this year.
From June to June, driven by the economic stimulus policy, value-added tax and business tax achieved positive growth, and tax revenue achieved positive growth of 12.2% for the first time.
In the first half of the year, due to the continuous negative growth of tax revenue, supplemented by the year-on-year increase of non-tax revenue of 3 1.4%, the national fiscal revenue still decreased by 2.4% year-on-year.
While income is declining, financial expenditure is increasing substantially.
In the fourth quarter of last year, new investment was 654.38+004 billion yuan, and in 2009, new investment was 487.5 billion yuan. As of June 25th, the central government has increased investment by 1. 1.8 trillion yuan and allocated funds of 591.50 billion yuan.
According to data from the Ministry of Finance, China's fiscal surplus in the first half of the year was 507.358 billion yuan, down about 57.5% year-on-year, of which expenditure increased by 26.3% year-on-year.
In fact, the sharp reduction of production-related taxes such as corporate income tax also reflects that the real economy is still not optimistic. In this regard, Ma Haitao, Dean of the School of Finance of the Central University of Finance and Economics, pointed out that the economic situation of enterprises in particular is still not out of the Woods.
"At present, the fiscal revenue and expenditure situation is not optimistic." Wang Yongjun bluntly said that even if the "eight guarantees" are successful, the fiscal revenue is still difficult to be optimistic. The fluctuation range of fiscal revenue has been far greater than the economic growth rate.
And the financial pressure does not stop there.
In Wang Yongjun's view, the fiscal deficit of 950 billion yuan is within the warning line of 3%, but if we add huge hidden debts, the financial pressure will be very great. According to his analysis, the public official data does not include those implicit government debts that are usually opaque and huge. For example, policy banks with financial guarantees and financial support have issued a large number of high-risk loans. Once there is a problem, the government will bear the principal and interest of these debts.
Tax system reform is in a dilemma.
Under the severe financial situation, the established tax reform is in a dilemma.
On May 25th, the State Council approved the notice of the National Development and Reform Commission's Opinions on Deepening Economic System Reform in 2009, calling for speeding up the reform of fiscal and taxation system, in which property tax, environmental tax, individual tax and resource tax, which were widely concerned, were mentioned again.
However, the reporter has been following the interview and learned that these widely concerned tax reforms have not made further substantial progress. The most typical is the resource tax reform, which was decided to be introduced as early as the end of 2007, and it has been difficult to produce so far.
When the Opinions on Deepening Economic System Reform in 2009 was published, some experts analyzed that in order to increase financial security, boost the economy and increase fiscal revenue, a series of tax system reforms may become an option, but so far, the signs of tax system reform speeding up have not appeared.
Some people from the Ministry of Finance told reporters that it would be more cautious and more difficult to introduce a tax reform plan in a bad economic situation.
The problem now is that the tax reform that increases the corporate tax burden will increase the burden on enterprises and is not conducive to economic recovery; Tax reduction policies that are beneficial to enterprises will further reduce fiscal revenue and aggravate financial difficulties.
In fact, the previously announced tax reduction plan of up to 500 billion yuan has aggravated the difficult situation of fiscal revenue. The analysis of the tax revenue of the Ministry of Finance in the first half of the year clearly pointed out that the policy reduction factors have great influence.
The reporter learned that due to the tax reduction policy, although the turnover of stocks and automobiles has increased substantially, the stamp duty on securities transactions and vehicle purchase tax are still decreasing, and the substantial increase in export tax rebate has also reduced the tax revenue accordingly.
Hu Shaowei, a research group on macro-policy trends of the National Information Center, wrote that there will still be many uncertainties and sudden risks in China's economic operation in the coming period. Even if the relevant tax reform plan is mature, we should fully consider various factors and seize the opportunity to introduce it.
Access structure adjustment
In the middle of the year, under the background of revenue and expenditure dilemma, how to choose fiscal policy in the second half of the year?
"will be committed to structural adjustment." Many people interviewed by this newspaper, such as Wang Yongjun, think that the general direction will definitely not change when analyzing the trend of the next proactive fiscal policy.
Wang Yongjun believes that the biggest problem facing China at present is overcapacity; Therefore, structural tax reduction, stopping or reducing subsidies to industries with overcapacity, and optimizing foreign-related preferential tax policies are the next priorities.
Li Huiyong, a macro analyst of Shen Yin Wanguo, said in an interview with this reporter that the "emergency" measures to maintain growth in the early stage have achieved initial results, and the focus of macro policy will be adjusted from "emergency" to "health preservation", and structural adjustment will become the main focus of the policy.
In an interview with this newspaper, Zhu Baoliang pointed out that in the second half of the year, it is not appropriate to increase policy stimulus for "maintaining growth", and the focus should be on implementing and improving the policies that have been introduced. At the same time, it is necessary to further improve policies such as structural adjustment, scientific and technological support, and improvement of people's livelihood, and cultivate new growth points that will drive a new round of economic recovery.
"The investment to start domestic demand should not only focus on the total expansion, but also be based on the grand plan of future development and increase the intensity of industrial restructuring." Hu Shaowei said.