China: toward the new stage of improving its tax system

Abstract

China’s existing tax system was established via the famous comprehensive fiscal reform conducted in 1994. In the next 20 years a series of incremental measures have been taken to improve this tax system framework. However, along with the increasingly deepened economic reform process, both outside and inside environments and the constrain condition facing the tax system have changed greatly. People have new adequate expectations for the tax policy. Responding to this changing circumstance, the direction of the tax system reform has undergone a fundamental change with its goal switching from «establishing the basic framework of the tax system suitable to the socialist market economy» to «establishing the modern tax regime in line with the modernization of the national administration system and administration capability» since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) on November 12, 2013. Against this background, we comprehensively analyze the causes, main contents, focuses, supporting measures and enforcement roadmaps of this fundamental tax reform.