Full text: Report on China's central, local budgets

III. Deepening Fiscal and Tax Reforms and Making Management More Scientific to Successfully Implement the 2013 Budgets

1. Implementing Policies and Finding Savings

We will carry out all measures for implementing the proactive fiscal policy to promote steady economic growth, economic structural adjustments, and a shift in the economic growth model. We will closely follow and analyze policy outcomes and strive to make policies more targeted, flexible, and forward-looking based on the economic situation. We will implement all tax and fee reduction and exemption policies to reduce the burden on enterprises and individuals. We will give high priority to spending in key areas, limit regular expenditure, and spend money where it can be used most efficiently. We will ensure funding for key areas such as agriculture, education, medical and health care, social security, employment, government-subsidized housing, and public culture and work hard to maintain and improve the quality of people's lives. We will faithfully comply with the Party Central Committee's eight-point regulations on improving the conduct of the Party and maintaining close ties with the people, economize in every area, and prevent extravagance and waste. We will tighten our belts; strictly limit regular expenditure and spending on official overseas trips, official vehicles, and official hospitality; tighten control over official cars and spending on meetings and business trips; restrict the construction and remodeling of office buildings and other facilities; further streamline and regulate celebrations, symposiums, forums, and other activities; and strive to reduce administrative costs.

2. Deepening Fiscal and Tax Reforms and Improving Systems and Mechanisms

We will move faster to improve the fiscal system to ensure that the financial resources of central and local governments are commensurate with their respective powers. We will make basic public services equally accessible to all and promote the development of functional zones. We will properly define the powers and spending responsibilities of central and local governments, and find a better way to distribute revenue between them as we replace business tax with VAT. We will improve the transfer payment structure to reduce special transfer payments and optimize the transfer payment system to ensure funds are used more efficiently. We will refine the mechanism for guaranteeing basic funding at the county level and provide more funds for county-level governments to deliver basic public services. We will enhance the system for managing budgetary revenue and expenditure and make budgets more complete, transparent, and effective. We will refine the government budget system, bring all government receipts and expenditures under budgetary management, continue to improve the budget system for government-managed funds, optimize the budget system for state capital operations and further increase spending from their revenue on social security and other areas related to improving people's lives, and work to establish an institutional framework and a set of standards for the budget management of social insurance funds. We will accelerate the establishment of a mechanism for sharing the proceeds from the transfer of public resources. We will improve the mechanism for releasing government budgets and final accounts and standardize which items should be disclosed and how to do so. We will work hard to introduce a performance-based budget management system and establish in due course a mechanism for applying it throughout the course of budget work. We will reform the tax system to make it more conducive to promoting structural improvements and social fairness. We will expand the pilot project to replace business tax with VAT to more areas, quickly work out a plan to carry out the project in the transportation industry and some modern service industries across the country, and further improve the VAT system. We will reform resource taxes and levy price-based taxes on more resources, refine the excise tax system and consider how to levy excise tax on products that consume excessively high levels of resources or are highly polluting, and work to establish a local tax system. In addition, we will make full use of the role fiscal and tax policies play in adjusting income distribution; support the reform of state-owned enterprises and public institutions as well as the banking, pricing, investment and financing systems; help to steadily improve the socialist market economy; and stimulate the internal vitality and driving force of economic and social development.