关键词: 转移支付, 财税制度, 财政均等化, 地方财政支出

Abstract:

Based on the reform process and the domestic literature, this paper provides a more comprehensive description of the development of the inter-governmental fiscal transfer system in China since the tax sharing reform. The central government uses transfer payments to localities to achieve vertical redistribution of financial resources, promote the equalization of basic public services between regions, implement specific macro policies, as well as guide and regulate the local fiscal expenditure behavior. With the expansion of the scale of fiscal transfers, it has gradually become an important pivot for regulating the financial relationship between the central and local governmentsfrom the initial “revenue sharing and subsidies” to “promoting fiscal equalization”, but at the same time, it has also given rise to some negative problems such as the “fly-paper effect”, local fiscal expenditure “emphasizing investment at the expense of people’s livelihood”, insufficient provision of effective public goods, and the rapid expansion of local government debt under the “public pool”, which has deviated from the incentive effect of the modern fiscal governance system. The future reform of the transfer payment system should be designed at the top level according to its own logic and path, with various types of transfer payments cooperating with each other and performing their respective functions, combining stability and flexibility, and giving full play to the unique role of transfer payments in coordinating the fiscal relations among governments, and becoming the foundation and important pillar of national governance.

Key words: Transfer Payments, Fiscal System, Fiscal Equalization, Local Fiscal Expenditure