In 2026, my country’s export tax rebate policy will undergo major adjustments.
Starting from April 1, export tax rebates for photovoltaic, ceramics, glass and other products will be cancelled. The tax rebate rate for battery products will first be reduced from 9% to 6%, and will be further canceled starting in 2027. At the same time, tobacco, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, miscellaneous chemicals, plastics and their products are also included in the scope of cancellation.
From an international comparison, the export tax rebate system follows the destination principle and aims to avoid double taxation and maintain tax neutrality in international competition.
Exports from Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries implement zero tax rates or return the tax burden to the front-end.
China’s legal level clearly clarifies that export goods are subject to zero tax rate, but at the implementation level, differentiated export tax rebate rates are still set according to the commodity catalog, and the system’s flexibility is significantly higher than that of Japan and South Korea.
This round of export tax rebate adjustments is not a partial fix, but a further switch in policy ideas.
At present, some industries, especially photovoltaics, batteries and other fields, have shown obvious characteristics of “volume increase and price decrease”. The decline in price is much greater than the expansion in quantity, indicating that industry competition has deviated from the track of high-quality growth.
Continuing to maintain a high tax rebate rate will intensify low-price competition, intensify production capacity expansion and profit compression.
By weakening the price subsidy mechanism, this adjustment will force companies to shift from competing on price to competing on technology and brand, promoting the upgrading of the industrial competition model.
From the perspective of fiscal expenditure reduction, this round of policies has a relatively strong regulatory effect.
The theoretical export tax refund amount in 2025 is approximately 2,871.6 billion yuan, while the actual export tax refund amount announced by the Ministry of Finance is 2,133.7 billion yuan, corresponding to a discount ratio of approximately 74% between the actual tax refund and the theoretical tax refund.
Based on the assumption that the overall export growth rate in 2026 is about 5%, it is expected that this round of adjustments will save fiscal funds of approximately 62.424 billion yuan in 2026 and approximately 119.643 billion yuan in fiscal funds in 2027.
This means that tax rebate adjustment is not only an industrial policy tool, but also directly corresponds to the reallocation of financial resources, diverting some of the financial resources originally used to “subsidize exports” to support domestic demand, people’s livelihood and high-quality development.
Industries where tax rebates will continue to be reduced or canceled in the future are likely to be concentrated in three categories.
The first is the “two highs and one capital” industries, such as petroleum and coal, mineral mining and processing, non-metallic minerals, chemical raw materials and products, etc., which promote the transformation of the industry into a green and low-carbon direction; the second is industries with overcapacity and serious involution, such as automobile manufacturing, textile and clothing, chemical raw materials and products, etc., whose common feature is PPI
Under pressure, profits are weak, and capacity utilization is low; third, advantageous industries with strong export competitiveness and high technological maturity, such as electromechanical equipment, mechanical equipment, and some new energy products, no longer rely mainly on price-based tax support for their international competitive advantages.
Slower-than-expected recovery in domestic demand and greater uncertainty in geopolitical conflicts are risks faced by this policy adjustment.
But overall, the adjustment of export tax rebates is of great significance to my country’s industrial upgrading and optimal allocation of financial resources.
