The tax department has been committed to fostering a market- and law-based and internationalized tax business environment, according to Mr. Shen Xinguo, director of the Taxpayer Service Department of the State Taxation Administration, introduced at the Press Bureau at the State Council Information Office on June 14.
Since early this year, the tax department has created a positive tax and business environment for high-quality development. Comprehensive measures have been issued around preferential policies, convenient tax payment proceeding, and tax law enforcement supervision, by focusing on the needs of business entities, and targeting international advanced level.
Firstly, policy implementation were improved effectively and a tax business environment favored enterprises was created through tax-related cut. The implementation of some phased tax and fee preferential policies that are decided and extended by the central government have been implemented to accurately and directly benefit targeted enterprises. In the first four months, 468.9 billion yuan in tax and fee cuts and tax refunds is extended nationwide.
Guidelines and Q&A are used to clarify policy applications, with specific guidelines on tax and fee policies by group and field, as 41 questions on preferential policies have been issued this year. Big data of taxation with a unified domestic labeled system, including 4219 tax knowledge items of nine categories and four levels, are used to improve the accuracy of policy publication, and target the needs of taxpayers. Targeting preferential policies have been publicized 209 million times this year.
Tax and fee cuts amid preferential policies have enhanced the sense of gain as they have been sent to 18.92 million large and medium-sized enterprises and specialized and sophisticated enterprises that produce new and unique products.
Secondly, smart tool-kits are broadly used to administrative subjects related to taxes and fees, such as broadened non-in-site administrative subjects, and pilot functions of like “intelligent pre-filling” for VAT refunds, and “non-filling” for export tax refunds. At present, 96 percent of tax matters and 99 percent of tax declarations are handled online, and more than 95 percent is accounted on online payment of national social insurance accounts. A total of 12,000 times of taxes and fees payment, about 25.9 billion yuan, have been processed through the pilot digital RMB tax payment this year. Innovative tax collection and payment interactive services, which help taxpayers solve online tax payment problems through “intelligent response”, “three-party video” and so on, so far this year offered 1.48 million interactive service.
Thirdly, the efficiency of tax enforcement were improved for a more fair and predictable tax business environment. Administrative law enforcement becomes more moderate with many non-mandatory methods, such as persuasion education, interview warning, and risk warning on six tax matters.
Law enforcement are more standardized, as the discretion benchmark for tax administrative penalties is unified in the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Sichuan and Chongqing region, and Northeast China, whereas to promote the regional coordination and unification of law enforcement. Illegal activities such as malicious tax evasion and fraud were cracked down harder. In the first five months of this year, 41,000 illegal taxpayers were punished, with various lost taxes of 65.1 billion yuan recouped.
Mr. Li Cheng professor of the School of Management of Xiamen University and a senior researcher at the China Business Environment Research Center of Xiamen University, pointed out that, like sunshine, air and water, a good business environment is indispensable to business entities. It is also an important part to build a high-quality tax business environment, while it requires to serve high-quality economic and social development and stimulate the vitality of business entities.
As an important body of economic management, the tax authorities, in recent years, have focused on the needs of business entities to launch a series of reform measures in the fields of preferential policies, convenient tax payment, tax law enforcement and supervision. They have adopted up-to-date measures to meet new needs, solve new problems, achieve new goals. They have created a more convenient, fair and predictable tax business environment. They are devoted to enhancing convenience, strengthening confidence and stabilizing expectations.
Mr. Shen said that the tax authorities will continue to further implement the policy decisions and plans of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in the next step. They will actively respond to the concerns of business entities, introduce more measures to benefit the people and enterprises, and strive to achieve new goals in promoting high-quality development.
