本文从租金的理论回顾入手，简要介绍了西方经济理论中的“经济租”、“稀缺租金”和“霍特林租金”的经济含义和相互关系，并以此为基础论证了我国资源税和矿产资源补偿费的经济性质，进而提出了资源税参与调节经济生活的理论依据和不可或缺的重要作用及其重新定位，即作为社会公共收入而不是作为国有资源租金表现形式的资源税，将以可持续发展为基本立足点，与环境保护政策相配合，专注于校正外部效应、维护代际资源利用公平、调整私人贴现率与社会贴现率的差异以及消除垄断对社会公平的损害和节能降耗等目标，这才应该成为资源税的基本定位和改革方向。

This paper analyzes the rent theory of the contemporary west economics, especially places an emphasis on expounding the core concept “economic rent”, the “scarce rent” of natural resources and the “Hotelling rent” of mineral resources in the rent theory of neoclassical economics. Then，this paper puts forward that the resources tax, which exists as tax, not the embody of rent, is based theoretically on adjusting the divergence of social and private aim because of the two layers of the natural resources’ social attribute. In other words, on one hand, exploiting the resources has the obvious private attribute for profits, on the other hand, exploiting the resources as a whole, the social common treasure, has the obvious social public attribute, so that there are some differences between private aims and social aims. Particularly, because the external cost of exploiting resources, the divergence of private discount rate and social discount rate harming the fairness between generations in the using of the resources, and the monopoly of resources harming the social fairness, the resources tax cannot but exists, and its function can not be replaced. This paper puts forward the long aim of the reform should be to separate and reassemble rental and tax for them to return to their appropriate places, so that the resources tax play a pole on adjusting the divergence of social and private aim during the process of exploiting resources.