Individual income tax payment is not simply a question of
personal responsibility, but should be correlated to unique family
conditions, says an article in People's Daily. The
following is an excerpt:
A year has passed since the first implementation of a tax
policy, which regulates that those who earn more than 120,000 yuan
($16,000) annually are obliged to voluntarily pay individual income
tax.
Tax was dodged by many high-income earners in Beijing and
Guangzhou early last year. It was reported recently that in Hubei
Province, 4,111 income earners above this threshold did not pay the
due tax in 2007.
They may argue that they forgot to pay or had not cultivated the
sense of voluntarily paying the tax, but we can clearly see they
wanted to try their luck to evade the tax.
Paying tax is not simply a question of whether people have the
will to do so. It is also related to the question of whether the
government can reward those taxpayers by financial policy and
protect their interests.
The pity is the inability of some people to fully understand the
benefits of paying taxes for public education, healthcare, care for
the aged and the unemployed.
On the other hand, the current individual income tax model does
not take into account taxpayers' burdens. The tax system should
advance with the times and adopt a people-oriented approach to set
down appropriate tax ratios.
(China Daily January 8, 2008)