The Ministry of Finance (MOF), State Administration of Taxation (SAT) and Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) will propose to the State Council, China's cabinet, a plan for levying an environmental tax in four pilot provinces, the First Financial Daily reports.

A research conference on environmental tax in West China's Yinchuan City has revealed that levying environmental taxes yields significant results, and four provinces - Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and Gansu - will become pilot zones.

Wang Hui, a lecturer with the law school at Shanghai Maritime University, told the newspaper that the MOF, SAT and MEP began researching environmental taxes in 2007, but the actual environmental problems are always more complicated than theoretical assumptions.

"For example, the extent of the damage caused by some pollutants actually depends on the emissions amount, location, environmental media, and even the location of the pollution sources," Wang said.

Wang Jinnan, an official with the MEP, said deciding who will approve the pollutant discharge amounts is still the most arduous problem in implementing the taxes.

"It is still a question whether the environmental protection department or tax administration will confirm it, and for environmental taxes, it would be better to experiment on one or two provinces first," Wang said.

According to the environmental tax enforcement schedule by the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development, China will improve environment-related taxes such as a resource tax, consumption tax and vehicle and vessel tax in the first three to five years, then begin collecting an environmental tax in the next two to four years, and finally expand the scale of the environmental tax in three to four years.