Seminar: Land Tax without Land and Land without Land Tax: A History of Land Tax in China

Land taxation in China dates from the earliest periods of Chinese civilization and until relatively recently has been the bedrock of its public finance system. This remarkably long history of land taxation is unique. This research considers how the development of land tax systems in China has a continuing relevance to Chinese taxation by demonstrating how various versions of the land tax fitted into the development of the general political and legal systems of the time. It shows that the development of the land tax systems had been concomitant with changes in the economic foundations and changes in the fortune of dynasties over the long history. Some patterns re-emerge over the millennia. The research examines the implications of the long history of land taxation in China for the political and legal system today in general and for the tax law system in particular. It suggests that current land tax reforms will be able to break the historical pattern of effective reform disintegrating over time only if the lessons of history have been understood. The research offers a perspective from which other land tax law systems can be viewed and evaluated.

Yan Xu is Scientia Associate Professor of Tax Law in the Business School at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Adjunct Associate Profession in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. She has been a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at Columbia Law School and has held a number of international academic fellowships at, among others, the University of Cambridge, New York University, and the University of Melbourne. She has published extensively in highly-ranked law journals and academic books and made presentations on invitation from prominent bodies, including the Australian Commonwealth Treasury, the International Fiscal Association and United Nations ESCAP. She has successfully secured several highly competitive government grants including Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Projects and Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund grants. Her research interests include comparative tax law and policy, international taxation and environment taxation.