Business / Opinion

How real is the tax burden

By Jia Kang (China Daily) Updated: 2014-03-04 08:22

Since indirect tax accounts for nearly 70 percent of the total tax revenue in China, mass consumers are actually the main group contributing to the national treasury, which is a special attribute that separates China from other economies.

The main reason why people feel the tax burden is heavy in China is that most of the consumers are in the low- and middle-income groups with higher Engel coefficient, which means they spend a high proportion of their income on food, shelter and clothing. In such circumstances, they will certainly not like to pay more taxes. And once they realize that they pay indirect tax each time they buy food and other products, they may get angry even at the mention of paying additional tax.

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The dialectics of China's tax burden

China's rapid economic growth has contributed to the widening income divide and could create new problems in the near future. To redress people's grievance and reduce the their tax burden, the government should properly and gradually increase direct taxes. Until people's tax burden is alleviated, the government has to maintain the macro tax burden level. When more public revenue comes from direct tax paid by people with higher income, the economic interests transferred to the national treasury will enable the public to enjoy more government welfare. As a result, people will be less reluctant to pay taxes.

Adjusting the proportion of direct tax can also be a good way of meeting the requirements of modern national governance and fiscal and taxation systems, allowing more people to share the achievements of the reform and opening-up.

The term, "per capita tax burden" is thus misleading, although the issue of "tax burden" cannot be avoided in today's society. The key to lessening the tax pressure on the public is neither reducing the macro tax burden nor introducing a per capita index but judiciously redistributing the tax pressure and social wealth in society.

As the Decisions on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms issued by the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China says, we should "gradually increase the proportion of direct tax" and the government should integrate the tax reform into the process of optimizing income distribution, and eventually promote the overall restructuring and modernization of governance.

The author is director of the Research Institute of Fiscal Science under the Ministry of Finance.