| 96% eligible individuals file tax returns |
SHANGHAI, Apr. 13 -- About 96 percent of individuals who earn more than 120,000 yuan (US$15,524) a year have filed their tax returns in China's first annual tax-return filing based on available database estimates.
About 1.63 million people nationwide have filed tax returns on their annual income of more than 120,000 yuan from January until April 2, the State Administration of Taxation said yesterday on its Website.
It is estimated that there are 1.7 million people who earn more than 120,000 yuan a year in China based on available data on the country's 20-million-plus individual tax payers whose records have been tracked.
The figure stands in sharp contrast to an estimation by An Tifu, a retired professor of finance at the Beijing-based Renmin University of China. An said in earlier media reports that there are likely six to seven million people who earn more than 120,000 yuan a year.
Industry experts said the tax filing requirement is a step in the right direction.
But some taxpayers complain they have little time to gain all information and prepare for the filing of various income sources like interest income.
"The accuracy of the information required to be reported on the tax return should not completely be left to the taxpayer's own data collection effort. There needs to be a more standardized and complete information collection process, including banks, brokerage houses, and employers, to help facilitate the collection of data required to complete the filing," said Vivian Jiang, a managing partner in charge of the Tax and Business Advisory Services Group at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in Shanghai.
Those who filed their returns paid a total individual income tax of 515 billion yuan last year, the tax body said. Another 1.9 billion yuan in income tax has been collected to make up for the outstanding sum based on the filing.
|
|
