Income tax reform must meet people's needs

More than 60,000 people have submitted about 130,000 opinions and suggestions for the amendment to the Individual Income Tax Law since the authorities solicited public opinions on the draft amendment in late June.

There is much room for adjustment to the existing Individual Income Tax Law, which many of the public opinions are likely to have suggested. According to the Ministry of Finance data, the individual income tax revenue from January to July this year was 922.5 billion yuan ($135.54 billion), up 20.6 percent year-on-year - in fact, the figure is higher than the individual income tax revenue for the whole of 2015 of 861.8 billion yuan.

On the other hand, in the first half of this year China's GDP growth was only 6.8 percent, and per capita disposable income 8.7 percent. This signifies a big imbalance in the growth of people's income and individual income tax revenue.