App change shows tax authority has heeded people's concerns

TENANTS DO NOT need to fill in the house owners' name and identification card number while providing information to the tax authority when applying for personal income tax deductions after Sunday. Beijing News comments:

The tax bureau adjusted its app at the weekend so that it is no longer mandatory for tenants to provide information about the property owners when applying for a tax deduction against their rental payments.

Although it was a misinterpretation of the policy, it was said the "tax deduction for tenants was a tax on the landlord".

Before the adjustment, tenants had to submit their landlords' personal information to the tax bureau to claim a 1,000 yuan ($147) tax exemption every month.

But few house owners pay tax on their rental income because the tax office has no access to their information, so many landlords worried that once the tax bureau had their personal details, it would only be a matter of time before they were taxed for their rental revenue.

So before the app adjustment, many landlords threatened to increase the rent they charged in order to cover their future rental income tax, in a bid to discourage their tenants from applying for their rental income tax reduction, which is much lower than their anticipated rental income tax.

It is good that the tax bureau made the timely change to its app to dispel the two sides' concerns. The seemingly tiny adjustment of a big information collection system reflects the taxation authority's responsiveness to people's practical concerns, which avoids scrapping a tax reduction policy that offers tangible benefits, although limited, to tens of millions of people, most of whom are new graduates or migrant workers.

Indeed, the reduction of information collection will give the tax authorities a certain degree of difficulty in identifying the authenticity of the declared expenses, but according to reports, the relevant evidence for claiming the deduction must be kept for five years, and the applicants' credit record will be marred if they are found providing fake information intentionally.