China has launched a nationwide inspection of the progress of
its rural tax reforms from Monday as part of its efforts to
standardize taxation on farmers and promote the rural economy.
According to a circular issued by the leading Group of Rural Tax
Reform under the State Council, the central government will send 10
inspection teams to look into the situation in the 10 provincial
areas where the reform has been carried out on an experimental
basis.
The reform initiated at provincial level in 2002 has reduced the
number of taxes and levies from dozens to merely three or four,
greatly easing farmers' burden.
The members of the inspection teams will be selected from among
central departments and provincial officials involved in the
related reform, according to the circular.
The 10 provinces that launched the reform before 2002 will also
be subject to investigation by the central government.
The teams will examine the implementation of the policies and
measures issued by the central and local governments to regulate
tax and fee collection in rural areas, publicity of the policies
and personnel training, institution building, the allocation,
management and use of fiscal funding as payment transfer for the
reform, and other tasks set by the governments.
The central government has allocated at least 10 billion yuan
(about US$1.2 billion) each year since 2002 to local governments to
pay the wages of rural teachers, which used to be paid by farmers
through local governments.
The reform was first experimented in part of east China's Anhui
Province in 1994 and, two years later, in 50 selected counties in
seven other major agricultural provinces.
In 2000, China extended the experiment to the whole of Anhui
Province, in a bid to standardizes the tax burdens on farmers
and eliminate the growing administrative and arbitrary fees charged
on farmers.
The number of provincial areas embracing the reform had grown to
20 by 2002, where 620 million farmers, or three quarters of the
country's total, benefited from the reform. The outcome was that
the financial burden on farmers was cut by at least 30 percent.
Before the reform, Chinese farmers used to pay 120 billion yuan
(about US$14 billion) in taxes and fees to local and central
governments each year, or 150 yuan per farmer, a hefty burden by
rural Chinese standards.
The Chinese government decided in late 2003 to abolish, exempt
or lower 15 charges on the country's 900 million farmers in a bid
to reduce their excessive financial burdens.
The Ministry of Finance and the State Development and Reform
Commission published the list of the 15 charges, involving
quarantine certificates, licensing fees for using water resources,
education, land-use rights certificates, and charges for fishing
boat inspections.
The government will not approve any new administrative fee
charges on farmers before the end of 2005 unless they are required
by law.
(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2004)