Abstract: The report of the 19th National Congress of CPC clearly puts forward that“a fiscal relationship between the central government and the local governments should be established, which has clear powers and responsibilities, coordinated financial resources and regional homogenization.”In order to effectively improve the division of powers and expenditure responsibilities between governments, it is necessary to systematically study its logical approach and stress the institutional guarantee and the matching of rule of law. As for the logic way, the adjustment of the expenditure responsibility is the starting point of the inter-governments power configuration; to rationalize the relationship between the central government and the local governments is the horizontal dimension; the distinction of the levels of public goods is the vertical dimension; and the transformation from the horizontal-vertical distinction into the multiple interactions is the end link. As for the institutional guarantee, it is necessary to establish the principle of the matching operation between financial resources and expenditure responsibilities, to integrate the added-value tax, the income tax and the tax returns, to establish the mechanism of local tax sharing package, to up-shift the expenditure responsibilities, to reduce the scale of inter-governments transfer payment, and to establish a transfer payment structure with the balanced fund-allocation as the principal and the one-piece fund-allocation as the subsidiary and the earmarks as the lowest. As for the matching of rule of law, it is necessary to improve the fiscal system and the systems of laws and regulations, to establish a modern government budget system, to construct a fiscal system that is ruled by law, and to construct a legalized power allocation mode.

Key words: inter-government powers; inter-government expenditure responsibilities; logic way; institutional guarantee; matching of rule of law