China Collects Environment-Protection Tax from Jan 1st, 2018

The Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China, as adopted at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee of the Twelfth National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China on December 25, 2016, is hereby issued, and shall come into force on January 1, 2018.
President of the People’s Republic of China: Xi Jinping

1. Purpose: This Law is enacted for the purposes of protecting and improving the environment, reducing pollutant discharges, and promoting ecological civilization construction.

2. Taxpayers: Withinthe territory of the People’s Republic of China and other sea areas under the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China, the enterprises, public institutions and other producers and operators that directly discharge pollutants to the environment are taxpayers of environmental pollution tax, and shall pay environmental pollution tax in accordance with the provisions of this Law. Steel, Foundry, Coal, Metallurgy, Building materials, Mining, Chemical, Textile, Leather and other pollution industries become a key monitoring enterprises.

3. Taxable pollutants: For the purpose of this Law, “taxable pollutants” means the air pollutants, water pollutants, solid wastes and noises as prescribed in the Schedule of Tax Items and Tax Amounts of Environmental Protection Tax and the Schedule of Taxable Pollutants and Equivalent Values.

4. The tax basis for taxable pollutants shall be determined by using the following methods:

5. What is the effect?
The implementation of Environment-Protection Tax, In the short term, enterprise cost increases and the price of products will rise again,which weaken the price advantage of chinese products to reduce international competitiveness,not in favor of chinese exports. While in the long run,it will encourage enterprises to adopt energy saving and emission reduction technology to improve efficiency,fulfill environmental responsibility. Thus promote enterprises to improve product transformation and upgrade,developing higher value-added, green Low-carbon products.