Between Tradition and Modernization: Further Discussion on the Business Tax Collection System in the Period of Nanjing National Government

Abstract:

One important characteristic in the development and evolution of modern Chinese taxation system was the transition from traditional tax system to modern tax system. As a modern industrial and commercial tax introduced from the West, business tax should to be checked and collected directly by tax collecting organs set up by the government. But in the process some traces or marks of traditional tax system still remained. The development and evolution of the business tax collecting system had experienced changes from the great prevalence of business tax collected by business groups on behalf of the tax authorities and business tax farming, to the gradual takeover of the power of tax collection by the government to exercise direct check and collection while complemented by commissioned collection by county government or other agents, and finally to the mixed simplified check collection. These changes of the business tax collection system resulted from the struggle of the government with the business circle under the concept of reducing tax collection cost and risk and based on the control power of the government itself. This explains that China’s tax collection system in its advance to modernization has been to face a difficult choice between tradition and modernization, ideal and reality.

Notes

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The control power here refers to the government’s ability in tax collection, including the support of the human, financial, and material resources to tax collection; tax collection cost refers to the expense the government pays in order achieve income from tax collection; tax collection risk refers to the bias between the result of tax collection and its expectation.

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Notes on contributors

Ke Weiming

Ke Weiming is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China.