Around 100b yuan tax reduction achieved in three months

A tax reduction of about 100 billion yuan ($14.75 billion) has been achieved and more than 70 million people do not need to pay tax on their personal income three months after the first step of the reform of personal income tax was implemented on Oct 1, according to a report by chinanews.com.

A national conference on taxation held on Thursday announced that while the growth rate of tax revenue gradually declined from 16.8 percent in the first four months of 2018 to 5.2 percent in the last eight months, the effect of tax reduction continued to show and taxpayers' sense of gains further improved with the number of taxpayers' complaints falling by 11 percent, the report said.

China raised the deduction baseline for personal income tax from 3,500 yuan to 5,000 yuan per month on Oct 1, and six categories of special deduction items, including children's education, continuing education, healthcare treatment for serious diseases, mortgage interest and rent, and senior care, took effect on Jan 1 this year, according to the Personal Income Tax Law amended on Aug 31.

The conference said the tax revenue task for 2018 were successfully completed, with the tax revenue (export rebates deducted) reaching 13.8 trillion yuan, an increase of 9.5 percent over the previous year.

At the same time, the tax reduction target for the whole year has been exceeded. The three reforms of value added tax, which have been implemented since May 1, have been carried out smoothly and orderly.

A lower value added tax rate contributed to a tax reduction of 270 billion yuan from May to December, of which 35 percent were enjoyed by the manufacturing industry; and the unified standard for small-scale taxpayers benefited 500,000 taxpayers, with a tax reduction of about 8 billion yuan.

The conference emphasized that tax authorities at all levels should take the implementation of tax reduction and fee reduction policies as the priority of this year's tax work to further reduce the burden on enterprises.