Chinese tax authorities will announce on April 10 the final number of personal income statements filed by the country's high-income earners.

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This is the first year the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) is requiring high-income earners, who earn more than 120,000 yuan (15,400 U.S. dollars) a year, to declare their annual incomes. The deadline was April 2.

As of March 29, the tax department had received 1.375 million tax declarations but some financial experts suggest there are six to seven million such high-income earners in the country.

The SAT declined to provide more comment on the issue until the final results come out but said those who failed to file income statements would be subject to keen scrutiny.

"In regions where large numbers of people fail to do so, tax authorities will ferret out some typical cases for punishment", Friday's Shanghai Securities News reports.

According to the regulations issued last year, those who fail to declare their incomes will face fines of between 2,000 yuan and 10,000 yuan. People who falsely report their incomes can be fined up to 50,000 yuan. Penalties for evading taxes can equal five times the amount of unpaid tax and a jail term.

However, an unnamed official with SAT's press office said the administration was expecting to receive more declarations in the next few days as "a number of taxpayers filed their income statements by post".

"Any declaration that was handed to the post office before midnight on April 2 is valid and it takes time for the tax authorities to receive them", he added.

By April 1, about 250,000 people had declared their annual incomes in Beijing, where there are 350,000 people who earn more than 120,000 yuan a year, according to figures from the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau.

The Bureau sent out 200,000 letters during the past three months to remind the capital's high-income earners to declare their annual incomes.

Tax authorities in south China's Guangdong Province have also receive 250,000 declarations but in northeastern Heilongjiang Province only a tenth of the expected number had done so and in central Hunan less than a half.

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