From the people's point of view, of course, the less the government "collects", the better, but this is unrealistic after all, because in essence, the tax collected by the government is the economic burden that enterprises and people in a country or region must bear in order to obtain public services provided by the government. As the saying goes, if you want to enjoy happiness, you must pay first. Public service means "enjoying happiness" and tax burden means "paying". People's tax burden "pain" is not only related to the amount of tax paid, but also related to how much happiness they enjoy. Only from the comparability of public service level, China people "enjoy happiness" less and "pay" more, which is the reason why China's tax burden pain index is higher.

For the direction of future tax reform, the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee set the tone of "stabilizing tax burden". Literally, it is to maintain the existing macro tax burden basically unchanged, although it will not increase, but it will not decrease. Because tax reduction and expenditure reduction are two sides of the same coin, tax reduction must first reduce expenditure. However, with the rising demand for public services and social welfare, as well as the needs of local government debt repayment and economic development, it is difficult for China to cut spending significantly at present. Therefore, rationally, the focus of China's tax reform in the future is not to reduce the tax burden, but to adjust the structure.

The first is to adjust the fiscal revenue structure. China's current small-caliber tax burden (tax revenue accounts for GD? P ratio) is about 20%, which is relatively low among China developing China countries. However, the large-caliber tax burden has risen sharply to about 37%, indicating that the government's non-tax revenue is too high, which is contrary to the establishment of a modern national system and a modern fiscal and taxation system. Therefore, the next reform direction is to clear fees and pay taxes, such as cleaning up various administrative fees and government funds, setting up environmental taxes, changing some real estate development fees into real estate taxes, and changing land transfer fees and social security fees into social security taxes.

Secondly, we should adjust the structure of taxation itself. From the perspective of tax structure, tax sources include direct tax and indirect tax. In China, direct taxes mainly include corporate income tax, personal income tax and land value-added tax; Indirect taxes mainly include business tax, value-added tax and consumption tax. According to preliminary statistics, China's direct tax accounts for about one third, and indirect tax accounts for two thirds. On the contrary, most developed countries in the world mainly rely on direct taxes, which generally exceed 60%. The higher the proportion of direct tax, the better. However, because indirect taxes are regressive, transferable and intermediate, the high proportion of indirect taxes will bring two obvious problems: First, it will cause unfair tax burden. Indirect taxes, regardless of whether the enterprise has profits or not, are taxed by "pulling the goose"; Second, the lower the income, or the worse the profitability of enterprises, the greater the pain of tax burden. Therefore, it is inevitable to increase the proportion of direct taxes and reduce the proportion of indirect taxes in the future. Specific reform measures include: comprehensive collection of personal income tax, property tax, inheritance tax, expansion of consumption tax, tax rate increase, value-added tax rate reduction and exemption, etc.

Finally, we should adjust the structure of fiscal expenditure. There are two specific reform measures: first, strictly control the administrative operating expenses of the government through anti-corruption and eight regulations; Second, through decentralization, give full play to the basic role of the market and build a "small government, big society and good market" as soon as possible.