"十五五"时期的中国地方财税体制改革路径OACHSSCD

The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee has set out the strategic agenda for China's 15th Five-Year Plan(2026-2030),in which the reform of the fiscal and tax system constitutes a central pillar of advancing the modernization of the national governance system.Against this backdrop,China's local fiscal operations are facing structural pressures from sharply declining land-transfer revenues,tightening debt constraints,a growing mismatch between the value-added tax(VAT)base and the digital economy,and significant regional disparities in income tax sharing.Local disposable fiscal resources have plateaued at around RMB 33 trillion since 2021,and the share of central transfers plus newly issued local government bonds has,for the first time,exceeded that of conventional revenues,indicating a transition from"land-based finance"to a hybrid pattern of"transfer-payment plus debt-financing". Drawing on an institutional analytical framework of central-local fiscal relations,and combining disaggregated fiscal statistics,inter-provincial comparisons and scenario-based simulations,this paper systematically examines the evolution of local fiscal autonomy,tax structure,and the allocation of expenditure responsibilities.Four key contradictions are identified:increasing dependence of economic growth on government spending;structural misalignment between the current VAT regime and the digital economy;pronounced regional disparities in income tax revenue;and a declining self-sufficiency ratio of local taxes(down from 50.2% in 2007 to 34.4% in 2024).Without increasing the macro tax burden,the paper proposes a package of three institutional reforms tailored to the 15th Five-Year Plan period.First,piloting a"digital VAT"within the existing VAT framework,with a clearly defined scope covering data-input digital services,intangible digital products,and platform-mediated intermediation services,applying the standard 13% rate and improving the input-credit chain.Second,gradually raising the local sharing ratio of the personal income tax from the current 40% to a range of 60%~80%,in order to realign local government incentives away from a production-oriented bias toward a service-oriented orientation.Third,transferring upward to the central government the local share of expenditure responsibilities for eight categories of central-local shared functions(compulsory education,student aid,basic employment services,basic pension insurance,basic medical insurance,basic health and family planning,basic social assistance,and basic housing security),accompanied by nationwide social-security portability arrangements.Scenario simulations indicate that,if the three reforms are implemented during the 15th Five-Year Plan period,they could generate an additional RMB 492 billion~846 billion in annual local revenue and reduce rigid local expenditure responsibilities by approximately RMB 960 billion,narrowing the local general public budget gap by RMB 1.5 trillion~1.8 trillion,equivalent to 50%~70% of the 2024 baseline gap. The contributions of this paper are threefold:it integrates fiscal autonomy,tax-structure adaptation and expenditure-responsibility allocation into a unified analytical framework;it advances a concrete"digital VAT"proposal aimed at reshaping the tax base in the digital economy;and it provides not only normative discussion but also quantitative scenario assessment of the proposed reforms,offering an evaluable and operational policy reference for completing China's modern fiscal system during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.