A method for determining and configuring a resource used for transmitting downlink data, a terminal and a base station: the base station configures, for each terminal, resource collections or resource collection subgroups used for receiving downlink data, and then the base station notifies the terminal, by means of an explicit signaling, whether all of the resource collections or each resource collection of the configured resource collections are available, or whether all of resource collection subgroups or each resource collection subgroup of the resource collection subgroups are available, thus allowing the terminal to determine, according to the notification, the time-frequency resource position of a resource used to receive downlink data, so that the terminal may carry out rate matching on the determined resource.