Abstract: Tax preference is extensively applied in the social economic development with state macro-control, which not only played a role in attracting investment and promoting industrial development in 1980s for the fast development of China's economy, but also is currently playing a role in optimizing the investment structure, promoting industrial upgrading and guiding economic transformation. However, it is because tax preference has been guided by such economic policies for a long time that it has become an increasingly discretionary object in national legislation, and is increasingly divorced from the nature of“taxation according to ability to pay”in tax law and the formula of “statutory taxation”. In the normal state of administrative power expansion in post-rule of law countries (social countries), the administrative organs (the exercised administrative power) have even become a decisive factor in the identification of tax preferences. Therefore, there are many provisions of pre or post procedures involving administrative agencies in the preferential tax terms. It is precisely because the current situation that tax preference has been successful that they should be interpreted in a new way. Thus, the multi-staged administration is not only the essence of things under tax preference, but also the only way to improve its rule of law.

Key words: income tax, tax preference, administrative behavior, multi-stage administrative behavior, statutory taxation