The deep integration of "politics, industry, academia, and research" promotes the optimization of tax collection and management, and tax research has entered the compulsory course college of universities for the first time
In the spring semester of 2023, the School of Public Economics and Management at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics offered a unique tax compulsory course, which has just concluded. In the past five months, department heads from the Third Taxation Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Taxation Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation have served as off campus mentors for this course, and together with 22 tax graduate students from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, they conducted in-depth research on financial enterprises.
The innovative thinking of the students, the theoretical support of the school, and the practical experience of the tax supervisor have sparked unexpected sparks in the course collision. A total of 6 groups of projects have been rated as excellent projects, and some suggestions will be attempted to be implemented under the promotion of the tax department in the second half of the year.
The relevant person in charge of the Third Taxation Bureau also stated that the "Xinshui Research" project provides new possibilities for solidly promoting theme education and promoting investigation and research, which can help solve practical problems in optimizing financial taxation and management. At the same time, the experience and practices formed by this project will gradually be replicated and promoted in the future, promoting more industry tax management research to deepen, refine, and implement.
Entering the Practical Tax Compulsory Course
The innovative course offered by the School of Public Administration at the University of Finance and Economics is called "Research on Tax Collection and Management". Graduate students from two parallel classes are divided into 20 research groups to conduct research on 10 hot tax issues. Each research group has 4 to 5 students, equipped with a tax supervisor and an on campus supervisor, who independently conduct research according to their respective research directions. They need to go through 5 stages: project proposal, literature review, enterprise research, mid-term report, and final defense to complete the course.
"The previous courses were mainly focused on imparting knowledge, while the current courses are problem oriented." Zhu Weiqun, a professor at the School of Public Administration and the Director of the Tax Master's Center at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, introduced that the course topics were jointly selected after multiple consultations with the Third Taxation Bureau, and are all problems that the tax department is facing and urgently needs to solve in practice.
In fact, "Research on Tax Collection and Management" has always been one of the compulsory courses for master's students in the School of Public Economics and Management at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. However, this year, this course has been put into practice for the first time, allowing students to absorb and transform tax collection and management knowledge through independent exploration.
"At the beginning, it was really difficult, only two out of ten questions could be understood," said Zhang Yuxuan, a 22-year-old master's student at the School of Public Administration at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Before the course started, everyone didn't know that this compulsory course had become a "research course", so they were unprepared, so they had to choose a topic they could understand, "International Experience Reference and Exploration of Shanghai Model in Offshore Financial Tax Policy".
Zhang Yuxuan told reporters that at the beginning, the group members were also very confused because offshore financial business is very complex. After finally understanding the concept, students are unable to obtain specific cases from their daily lives for tax analysis, and can only gain some practical insights through literature research.
In the later stage, after understanding the students' ideas, the tax advisor not only helped the "offshore finance" group contact financial enterprises such as the Shanghai Branch of the People's Bank of China for discussion and research, but also provided enterprise cases after information desensitization, allowing students to have a more intuitive and profound understanding of the application of cross-border payment data and investment business regulatory data of financial institutions. In the end, Zhang Yuxuan's group won a special prize in the final defense.
Tian Zhiwei, the on campus supervisor of the "Offshore Finance" group and associate professor of the School of Public Administration, said that at the beginning of the course, he had imagined that students would encounter difficulties, but the final presentation of the course was very good. He believes that the open and innovative course model has improved students' initiative. During the process of independent exploration, students have also improved their academic and teamwork abilities. "When these students graduate, the quality of their graduation thesis will definitely be different."
It is understood that this is the first time that Shanghai University of Finance and Economics has attempted a teaching model that integrates politics, industry, academia, and research in professional master's education. Yao Lingzhen, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, sighed, "The joint efforts of government agencies, financial enterprises, and universities to improve tax collection and management, optimize the business environment, and integrate professional degree graduate education are a very good exploration."
Towards optimized tax collection and management measures
At the recently held closing ceremony, Zheng Jiming, Secretary and Director of the Party Branch of the Third Taxation Bureau, said, "As the first batch of theme education units, Shanghai Taxation and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics jointly plan to promote joint teaching. This is not only an in-depth exploration of party industry integration in theme education, but also an important measure to promote the combination of investigation and research, theory and practice, and solve development problems. It has good guidance and reference significance."
The reason why the Third Taxation Bureau initially proposed to conduct joint research with universities is also due to its own tax collection and management characteristics in the financial industry. Among the branches under the Shanghai Municipal Taxation Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation, the Third Taxation Bureau is the only branch involved in tax collection and management of financial institutions. Last year, the Financial Industry Research Office was just established.
The financial industry is the most complex industry in the entire tax collection and management system, with a wide range of segmented business types and extremely strong professionalism. In order to provide good tax collection and management services, tax authorities must promote industry research to go deeper and more refined.
Yang Jing, Deputy Director of the Third Taxation Bureau, introduced that although the research laboratory usually conducts a lot of research, the perspectives of students are often new and different from the common thinking of tax officials. The difficulty of the questions raised by students in the classroom also exceeds the imagination of tax officials. "After the topic was opened, we were shocked. At that time, a section chief who participated in off campus guidance told me that 'it's too difficult' and he had to go back to 'make up for the class'."
The "Xinshui Research" project was successfully launched, and students presented practical research reports, which also provided tax officials with suggestions and reflections. Taking the pre ruling system for tax governance in large enterprises as an example, pre ruling can help enterprises solve their worries, reduce their own tax risks, and improve the efficiency of business decision-making. However, the system is currently not operating in a standardized manner. Although it has been proposed for a long time and tax departments in various regions have made attempts, there is still an urgent need for more cases to promote the improvement of tax laws and systems. The research group has conducted visits and surveys to multiple enterprises, distributed questionnaires, and adopted multiple opinions to come up with a preliminary process plan that has been pre determined. They have also responded to key issues related to actual promotion.
Yang Jing revealed that multiple research achievements, including the exploration of the pre ruling system for tax governance in large enterprises, will gradually be implemented in the second half of the year and applied to policy measures, suggestions, and reserves. "The fundamental purpose of 'Xinshui Research' is to create an 'upgraded version' of Shanghai International Financial Center and optimize the business environment of the financial industry, so we will not let our research results stay on paper."
From scratch, from 0 to 1, through one semester of experimentation, the "Xinshui Research" project has formed a complete curriculum framework and cooperation model, which will continue to be offered in the following semesters. At the same time, the project has already had a positive impact in the tax system, and research labs in industries other than finance have also proposed cooperation ideas. In the future, more tax departments may participate in the in-depth integration research of government, industry, academia, and research.
