Recently, the General Offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council issued the Opinions on Adjusting and Perfecting the Use Scope of Land Transfer Income to Give Priority to Rural Revitalization, requiring that by the end of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, the proportion of local land transfer income used for agriculture and rural areas should reach more than 50%.

Land transfer income is an important part of the budget income of local government funds. For a long time, land value-added income has been taken from agriculture, mainly used in cities, which has effectively promoted the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, but the proportion of direct use in agriculture and rural areas is low, which is not enough to support agricultural and rural development.

Therefore, in accordance with the requirements of "taking it from agriculture and mainly using it for agriculture", the Opinions call for adjusting the urban-rural distribution pattern of land transfer income and steadily increasing the proportion of land transfer income used for agriculture and rural areas.

According to the current relevant regulations, local financial departments at all levels should use not less than 15% of land transfer income for agricultural land development, 10% for farmland water conservancy construction and 10% for education funds (mainly for rural basic education).

Although the proportion of the above three items totaling 35% seems not low, considering that the income from land transfer is far less than the total income from land transfer (land transfer income = land transfer income+cost expenditure+related taxes and fees), the total amount of this income used for agriculture and rural areas in recent years is actually relatively small.

In 20 12, Han Jun, then the deputy director of the State Council Development Research Center, wrote an example in Farmers Daily, pointing out that the distribution of land income obviously tilted towards cities. 20 1 1 year land transfer income exceeds 31500 million yuan, and 201/year reaches 65438.

How to provide more abundant financial guarantee for the current rural revitalization and adjust the use direction of land transfer income has become an important option for the central government.

The Opinions require that all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) steadily increase the proportion of land transfer income used for agriculture and rural areas from the first year of the 14 th Five-Year Plan; By the end of the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan", according to the accounting of provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government), the proportion of land transfer income used for agriculture and rural areas has reached more than 50%.

1994 after the tax-sharing reform, in order to alleviate the local financial pressure, the central government decided that the land transfer income basically belongs to the local government, which has continued to this day. Since then, in addition to collecting relevant taxes and fees, the central level cannot control the expenditure of local land transfer income in real time.

In this case, how to restrain local governments to effectively use more land transfer income for agriculture and rural areas to achieve the goal of 50%?

This document of the Central Committee has also taken this situation into consideration and made a more specific system design.

The "Opinions" stipulate that the method of accrual shall be determined by the provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government). Provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) can choose one of the following two ways to organize the implementation according to local conditions:

First, gradually withdraw according to the proportion of funds used for agriculture and rural areas in the land transfer income of that year. If the withdrawal amount is less than 8% of the land transfer income, it shall be at least 8% of the land transfer income; Second, according to the proportion of land transfer income used in agriculture and rural areas in that year, it is gradually mentioned as 10% or more.

The "Opinions" also specifically stipulates that in a few areas such as Beijing and Shanghai where land transfer income is high and agricultural and rural input demand is small, the specific proportion of increasing land transfer income for agriculture and rural areas can be determined according to actual needs.

Look carefully at these two ways, which involve the specific proportion of land transfer income, one is 8%, and the other is 10%. In other words, no matter what the net income from land transfer is, the minimum proportion of local government land transfer income used for agriculture and rural areas is set at 8%.

Why is the system designed like this? The main reason is that the income from land transfer is convenient for accurate statistics, while the net income is sometimes difficult to calculate accurately.

What is the income from land transfer? Simply put, it is the sum of land transfer fees successfully transferred by local governments. In recent two or three years, China's annual land transfer income has reached the scale of six or seven trillion yuan. For example, in 20 18, it was 6,509.6 billion yuan, and in 20 19, it was 725 17 billion yuan. As far as cities are concerned, the land transfer income of hot cities such as Hangzhou has exceeded 200 billion yuan/year in recent years.

If roughly calculated according to the proportion of land transfer income of 8% in 2065438+2009, the total amount of funds used for agriculture and rural areas in that year was as high as 580 billion yuan.

The income from land transfer is calculated by subtracting the compensation fee for land acquisition and demolition, the pre-development fee for land transfer, and the subsidy fee for land-expropriated farmers from the total amount of 6.7 trillion yuan. The above expenses are paid in advance by the government in the collection, storage and land consolidation.

Over the years, the cost of land acquisition and demolition has increased a lot, which has correspondingly reduced the proportion of land transfer income in the whole land transfer fee.

In addition, it is precisely because the central government has set a designated purpose for part of the land transfer income that some places deliberately raise the land transfer cost to avoid the above purpose, thus reducing the net income.

A land expert once told CBN that some local governments would reduce the net income from land transfer. Once the net income of local land transfer is reduced, it means that local governments can reduce their expenditure on the above major projects. In order to reserve more space, many other expenses may be included in the cost, such as greening the surrounding land and building municipal roads.

This situation is clearly within the decision-making consideration of the central authorities. The "Opinions" require that the cost of land transfer should be strictly verified, and the construction costs of infrastructure and public welfare projects unrelated to the pre-development of land should not be included in the cost accounting scope, thus inflating the cost of land transfer and reducing the income from land transfer.

As can be seen from the above two ways of accrual, the reason why the total amount of accrual accounts for the lowest proportion of land transfer income (8% and 10%) is also because the local land transfer income will be inaccurate due to objective factors or subjective wishes, thus affecting the operability and supervision difficulty of the 50% proportion.

According to the ratio of 8%, it can be found that in 20 1 1 year, the income from land transfer fees is 31500 million yuan, and the accrued expenses for agriculture, rural areas and farmers in that year should reach 250 billion yuan, which may be twice the actual expenditure in that year (20 1 1.

From the point of view, the strength of this reform can be seen, but it also means that its promotion is not difficult.

The "Opinions" emphasize that adjusting and improving the scope of land transfer income and increasing the proportion used for agriculture and rural areas should be included in the performance appraisal of rural revitalization strategy as an important part of supervising the implementation of the No.1 Document of the Central Committee. Seriously investigate and deal with unauthorized relief, interception, misappropriation, misappropriation of land transfer income payable to the state treasury, inflated land transfer costs, illegal use of agricultural and rural investment funds and other acts, and investigate the responsibilities of relevant responsible persons according to laws and regulations.