Utilizing financial and tax leverage to promote green transformation (Financial Eye · Deepening the Promotion of Green and Low Carbon Development) Financial and tax policies are an important support for promoting green and low-carbon development. They play an important guiding role in supporting pollution prevention and ecological protection, promoting enterprise energy conservation and consumption reduction, green transformation, driving green consumption, advocating low-carbon living, and other aspects. The recently released "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Accelerating the Comprehensive Green Transformation of Economic and Social Development" proposes to "improve the financial and tax policies for green transformation. Actively build a financial and tax policy system that is conducive to promoting green and low-carbon development and efficient utilization of resources", "improve the green tax system, comprehensively promote the transformation of water resource fees into taxes, and improve the environmental protection tax collection system". What are the current achievements of fiscal and tax policies in supporting green development, and how can we better leverage the role of fiscal and tax policies in the next step? The reporter conducted an interview. Strengthen financial support, support ecological protection and pollution prevention, and enjoy a gentle breeze along the banks of the Nanhe River. After several months of renovation, the Sichuan Nanhe National Wetland Park located in Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province, has recently officially opened to the public. The renovated West Entrance Square is more spacious, with pleasant scenery along the way. Citizens have exclaimed that "the wetland park has become more open and atmospheric" and "the environment has become more comfortable". It is reported that the renovation of Nanhe Wetland Park not only focuses on upgrading infrastructure to further enhance citizens' leisure and amusement experience, but also integrates wetland ecology with sponge engineering, renovating permeable roads, rain gardens, and wetland wet ponds to achieve on-site storage, retention, and dissipation of rainwater. The comprehensive upgrading and renovation project of Nanhe Wetland Park is a manifestation of financial support for exploring the development model of sponge city construction and accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. In recent years, we have focused on strengthening financial support, improving the quality of urban and rural ecological environment, and collaborating with the Provincial Department of Housing and Urban Rural Development to carry out provincial-level sponge city construction, urban domestic sewage and urban and rural domestic waste treatment facility construction and other related work. From 2022 to 2023, no more than 30 cities (county towns) will be selected as demonstration cities for sponge city construction at the provincial level, and a certain amount of financial support will be provided annually. As of now, more than 1.055 billion yuan of provincial financial funds have been arranged The relevant person in charge of the Finance Department of Sichuan Province introduced that this year, they plan to select 10 provincial key cities (county towns) for urban renewal, and provide up to 150 million yuan in funding support for prefecture level cities and up to 90 million yuan in funding support for county-level cities (including county towns) over three years. They will systematically promote the construction of drainage and flood prevention engineering systems, fill the gaps in municipal infrastructure, and update and transform old areas to help cities achieve high-quality development. Accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, green finance plays an important role Li Xuhong, Vice Dean of the Beijing National Institute of Accounting, said that green finance mainly includes green finance revenue, green finance expenditure, green transfer payments, etc., aiming to promote technological innovation, energy conservation and emission reduction, industrial structure optimization, and green sustainable development through the two-way force of fiscal fund revenue and expenditure. In recent years, the practice of green finance reform has been deeply promoted from the central to local levels, and significant results have been achieved. The central government strengthens resource coordination and comprehensively utilizes various policy measures to support green and low-carbon development. According to statistics, in the past five years, the central government has allocated about 300 billion yuan in funds for the prevention and control of air, water, and soil pollution, with an average annual growth rate of over 9%. This year, the central government has allocated 34 billion yuan for air pollution prevention and control funds to continue supporting clean heating work in northern regions during winter; We will allocate 26.7 billion yuan for water pollution prevention and control, and strengthen the protection and management of major rivers, important lakes, and key sea areas; The transfer payment arrangement for key ecological functional areas is 112.1 billion yuan, guiding local governments to strengthen ecological protection. Each region should adapt to local conditions and actively explore and improve the green finance system and mechanism. Yunnan will further improve the transfer payment system for ecological functional zones, incorporating factors such as ecological function value and county-level ecological environment quality assessment into fund allocation; Zhejiang innovatively constructs a green development fiscal reward and subsidy mechanism, linking fiscal rewards and punishments with the efforts of local governments and the quality of the ecological environment; Heilongjiang Province has established and improved a horizontal compensation mechanism for key ecological elements such as water, air, forests, and grasslands within the province, rewarding excellence and punishing inferiority to guide cities and counties in carrying out ecological environment governance work... Li Xuhong believes that in order to make good use of fiscal funds to support comprehensive green transformation, it is necessary to continue to actively explore innovative cross regional ecological compensation mechanisms, improve the efficiency of fiscal fund utilization, and promote regional green coordinated development. At the same time, the reform of the fiscal budget and supervision system should adapt to the goal of green and low-carbon development, form a scientific and effective budget preparation and supervision mechanism, ensure the precise allocation of fiscal funds, and maximize the benefits of green fiscal funds. Give full play to the role of tax regulation, guide enterprises to green transformation, adhere to ultra-low emissions, and carry out energy conservation and consumption reduction. Huaneng Chongqing Luohuang Power Generation Co., Ltd. will increase the transformation and upgrading of environmental protection technology and equipment. The introduction of environmental protection tax is an important driving force for enterprise transformation and green development. At that time, the load of thermal power units in the power plant decreased, coal consumption increased, and revenue decreased, putting great pressure on the enterprise, "said Yang Yingge, the financial director of the company. We will carry out ultra-low emission transformation on all six generator sets and install windproof and dust suppression nets in the coal yard to increase efforts in green transformation Yang Yingge said. The effect is immediate. In 2018, the pollution equivalent generated by Luohuang Power Generation decreased by 73.1% compared to 2017, and the environmental protection tax paid was 2.14 million yuan, a decrease of 73% compared to the pollution discharge fee paid in 2017 of 7.96 million yuan. The two accounts before and after have strengthened Luohuang Power's confidence in pursuing green development. In 2020, Luohuang Power Generation completed the first sludge coupled power generation project in the southwest region, starting the harmless disposal of urban sludge. We treat the sludge in urban sewage and send it as biomass fuel to power plant boilers for co firing with coal to generate electricity. Each ton of sludge can produce an efficiency equivalent to 0.4 tons of ordinary fuel, and the project has an annual processing capacity of 400000 tons of wet sludge Yang Yingge said that taking the path of green transformation has enabled enterprises to achieve a double harvest of environmental and economic benefits. The environmental protection tax alone has been reduced by over 25 million yuan from January 2018 to June 2024. At present, China has gradually established a green tax collection system with environmental protection tax as the main body, resource tax as the focus, farmland occupation tax, urban land use tax, consumption tax and other tax types as auxiliary, and other tax and fee preferential policies as supplements, called 'multi tax co governance' and 'multi policy combination'. It plays a 'two-way driving' role in suppressing enterprise energy consumption and total emissions, and encouraging enterprises to save energy and reduce emissions in multiple links such as resource extraction, production, circulation, and emissions Li Xuhong said. Green transformation continues to accelerate, driving the development of green industries. According to the value-added tax invoice data, from January to July, the sales revenue of clean energy power generation increased by 12.1% year-on-year, accounting for 35.7% of the sales revenue of the power production industry. The work of reducing consumption is progressing in an orderly manner, and investment in pollution control is continuously increasing. According to the value-added tax invoice data, from January to July, the sales revenue of high energy consuming manufacturing accounted for 30.7% of the manufacturing industry, a decrease of 0.8 percentage points compared to the same period last year; The purchase of environmental governance services by industrial enterprises increased by 18% year-on-year, and the enthusiasm of enterprises to increase investment in environmental protection is becoming increasingly high. He Daixin, Director of the Finance Research Office at the Institute of Finance and Economics Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that in the next step, optimizing the tax system structure for green development should start from two aspects: expanding the scope of tax regulation and enhancing regulation efforts, coordinating medium - and long-term goals such as carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion, and growth, and enhancing the role of taxation in resource conservation, pollutant reduction, and other fields. At the same time, further research is needed on the logical connections between tax preferential policies for various tax categories, in order to improve the overall matching degree between the tax policy system and the tax system structure. Promoting green consumption and advocating a low-carbon lifestyle. "I heard that there has been a new policy recently that offers significant discounts, so I came to take a look." At Suning Shopping Mall on Chaoyang Road in Chaoyang District, Beijing, Mr. Chen, a citizen, was interested in a refrigerator with a listed price of 7699 yuan. The subsidized price of this refrigerator manufacturer is 5499 yuan. As it belongs to the first level energy efficiency product, according to the government's policy of encouraging green and intelligent consumer goods to trade in, it can also be discounted by 20% on the basis of 5499 yuan. If you use coupons from related platforms again, the final price you get is around 4100 yuan Introduction by salesperson Ma Minghao. The policy of exchanging old for new has been further strengthened, boosting residents' confidence in consumption. Taking Beijing as an example, this time we will increase the subsidy for 8 types of household appliances through trade in. Compared with the policy implemented in June, the scope of financial subsidies has been expanded to support first and second level energy efficiency (water efficiency), and the subsidy standards have been raised to 20% for first level energy efficiency (water efficiency) products and 15% for second level energy efficiency (water efficiency) products. The policy upgrade has driven the sales of the first batch of landing cities to double. According to statistics, Suning.com in Beijing has seen a 7-fold year-on-year increase in sales of old for new products. The fiscal and tax policy "gift package" has injected new impetus into the home appliance market and further promoted green travel. Nowadays, domestic new energy vehicles have advantages in terms of price and usage cost, coupled with favorable policies such as trade in and vehicle purchase tax reduction, new energy vehicles have become the 'favorite' of many families Zhang Can, the person in charge of Harbin Bokai Automobile Sales and Service Co., Ltd., said that the company has sold nearly 800 new energy vehicles in the past three months, an increase of nearly 67% compared to the same period last year. To guide the public towards green travel and support the development of new energy vehicles, since 2022, the provincial finance has allocated bonus funds for the construction of new energy charging infrastructure. At present, there are 41604 electric vehicle charging stations in the province, with a ratio of 1.95:1 between electric vehicles and charging stations, which basically meets the charging needs of electric vehicles and effectively promotes the healthy and stable development of the new energy industry The relevant person in charge of the Finance Department of Heilongjiang Province said. Increasing government green procurement efforts has also become an important way for many places to promote the application of green products and support green and low-carbon development. Zhejiang has increased its efforts in mandatory and prioritized procurement of energy-saving and environmental protection products, with the procurement scale of energy-saving and environmental protection products accounting for over 80% of the government procurement scale of similar products; Baotou City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is exploring government green procurement, incorporating carbon footprint management requirements into government procurement demand standards, and encouraging purchasers to purchase and use low-carbon products. In the future, we should continue to improve the mechanism for guiding green fiscal expenditures, effectively use tools such as green subsidies and government green procurement, promote the development of new energy, new materials and other technologies, and guide the market and consumers to adhere to green investment and consumption Li Xuhong said. He Daixin believes that from the supply side, it is necessary to actively encourage green production, suppress pollution emissions, increase the support of corporate income tax for ecological civilization construction, encourage enterprises to carry out environmental protection and energy-saving investment and environmental protection technology research and development, and further increase tax rates for specific environmental pollutants and resource consumables, effectively regulating the environmental pollution and resource consumption behavior of relevant entities. From the demand side, green consumption should be encouraged and high consumption should be curbed, for example, by optimizing the scope and tax rate of consumption tax collection, fully leveraging its regulatory role in green production and consumption. (New Society)