The muddle-headed account of land transfer needs to be clarified by legislation.

According to media reports, in the past 13 years, the total amount of land transfer fees totaled nearly 20 trillion yuan. However, grass-roots cadres have revealed that only the head of the department and the specific manager can clearly explain how much has been collected and how to use it. As a result, there are many kinds of chaos, such as embezzlement and misappropriation, high cost, cardiopulmonary bypass and so on.

A huge amount of land transfer fee has become a "muddle-headed account". It is undoubtedly a good thing that the country will conduct a large-scale audit of land transfer fees for the first time. There is a view that the big audit is "getting to the bottom of the family", laying the groundwork for fiscal and tax reform.

When the property tax was first proposed, some people questioned that the value of land that had been paid land transfer fees before housing construction was listed as the subject of property tax is "repeated collection", which is unreasonable. Now there is news that the property tax will be rolled out across the country in the near future. Then, the fiscal and taxation system around the land transfer fee is not only related to the land transfer fee itself, but also related to the rationality of the real estate tax.

Land transfer fee and property tax are two completely different concepts. The land transfer fee exists in the land market transaction link, which is the land rent collected by the state as the land owner for 70 or 50 years. On the other hand, the property tax exists in the retention of real estate. If the part of the land transfer fee is removed when levying the property tax, there will be no problem of repeated collection. If it is not shaved off, it should be called "real estate tax" or "real estate tax".

In that case, there are two possibilities for the future of the land transfer fee, one is to continue to exist independently, and the other is to merge it into the real estate and levy taxes together. It is the simplest and easiest to tax the land transfer fee into the real estate. In this way, the land transfer fee will naturally enter the financial revenue, and the revenue and expenditure will be carried out in strict accordance with the "budget law" and the "decision law", and it will no longer be a "muddle-headed account". Moreover, it has successfully solved people's anxiety about the expiration of land use rights.

However, government officials may not be willing to merge land transfer fees into real estate taxes; on the one hand, the combined taxation has become a long stream, which is not conducive to the promotion of the "performance project"; second, the examination and approval of the National people's Congress is not as convenient as the budget management of local government funds; third, the flexible space for illegal operation has been greatly reduced. More importantly, at present, the cities of our country are still in great development, and objectively need the platform of land transfer fee to provide convenience for the government.

In addition, continue to allow land transfer fees to exist independently, in addition to facing "self-management" information is not transparent, breed a large number of illegal corruption, but also bear the doubt of high housing prices, very few local governments even look for "support" to speculate on land prices. Urban construction, back-feeding water conservancy, indemnificatory apartment construction, enrich social security funds, return farmers, develop education. The specific areas in which the land transfer fee should be used have been suggested and controversial so far. Of course, we should believe that the Government has the ability to co-ordinate and make rational use of funds.

The most important contradiction is that the rent behind the land transfer fee has a fixed number of years, and it is collected at one time, which leads to the common phenomenon of "living beyond our means"; the next government often has to rely on demolition and reconstruction to further increase rent income, which is actually the root cause of the continuous speculation of high land transfer prices in China, leading to high housing prices. It is understood that the western developed countries have generally passed legislation to regulate the control of land transfer fees, and each government can only control the rent during the term of office of each government, and the rest is referred to special accounts.

Therefore, no matter how the fiscal and taxation system around the land transfer fee is reformed, it can not avoid the legislative problem. If it is merged into the real estate and taxed together, it needs to be made clear in the relevant legislation of real estate tax; if it continues to exist independently, whether it should be brought into the unified management of financial revenue, and how to scientifically distribute the right to use the land transfer fee, it also needs special legislation to make it clear. It is hoped that after the legislation, the land transfer fee is no longer a muddle account.