Recently, the three-year levy of China’s environmental protection tax announced by the State Taxation Administration has drawn the attention of PECC. According to the statistics of the State Taxation Administration, calculated based on the tax period, the revenue of environmental protection tax in 2018, 2019 and 2020 reached 20.56 billion yuan, 21.32 billion yuan and 19.99 billion yuan respectively, with a total revenue of 61.87 billion yuan. In the past three years, the number of taxpayer households has risen from 267,000 to 462,000 over the past three years, and the number of taxpayers of environmental protection tax has nearly doubled, but the total amount of environmental protection tax is relatively stable and the average amount of tax paid by each household has decreased significantly...
Since 2020, PECC has released five consecutive research reports of green taxation and established communication mechanisms with provincial and municipal taxation bureaus across the country to understand the enjoyment of tax preferences in industries such as sewage treatment, garbage treatment, comprehensive utilization of resources and other industries.
Environmental penalties for enterprises are linked to tax preferences. Judging from the replies from the tax bureaus in various places, there are many cases where enterprises are charged with value-added tax due to environmental penalties. Up to now, 16 enterprises have been charged with value-added tax, including 4 enterprises with an amount of more than one million yuan, 1 enterprise with a value of more than 10 million yuan, and the cumulative amount of value-added tax is more than 30 million yuan. The environmental protection tax paid by enterprises is relatively small, less than 10,000 yuan. According to the statistics, only 2 enterprises paid the environmental protection tax and were charged a late payment fee. Most of them have taken the initiative to pay environmental protection tax, and the competent authorities of environmental protection and tax authorities have gradually established a sharing platform tax-related information and a working cooperation mechanism.
The environmental protection tax is calculated and levied according to the actual discharge of pollutants, and a positive incentive mechanism of “more discharge and more payment, less discharge and less payment, and no discharge and no payment” has been established. In addition, the state also stipulates exemption or reduction of environmental protection tax.
The introduction of environmental protection tax, on the one hand, increases the cost of emissions, on the other hand, enterprises can enjoy tax preferences for reducing emissions. According to statistics, since the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law on January 1st, 2018, taxpayers have enjoyed a cumulative tax reduction of 10.26 billion yuan for low emissions, 15.22 billion yuan for tax-free dividends for centralized sewage treatment, and 3.89 billion yuan for tax-free dividends for comprehensive utilization of waste.
Environmental protection tax plays an important green role in environmental governance. It uses the leverage mechanism of taxation to stimulate clean production and guide enterprises to transform from “passive emission reduction” to “active action”.