Sansha Satellite TV:

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, what have taxation authorities done to improve tax services and improve the taxation environment? Focusing on alleviating the burden on businesses, stimulating market vitality, and improving the business environment, with which taxpayers are concerned, what new measures will be introduced and what are the priorities this year? Thank you.

Wang Daoshu:

I will answer your questions. Thank you for your interest in this field.

The taxation authorities serve tens of millions of enterprise taxpayers and self-employed individuals, hundreds of millions of natural person taxpayers, and more than one billion payers. The taxation department is one of the government departments which have the closest contact with market entities, serve the people most directly and have the most frequent contact with the people. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, taxation authorities have focused on dealing with the blockage, difficulties, and pain points reflected by taxpayers, promoted the transfer from focusing on offline tax services to equal attention to both online and offline tax services, from focusing on general service to more personalized services, and the quality and efficiency of tax and fee services have been improved. According to the Doing Business Report released by the World Bank, China's taxation index rank has been rising, and its score in a third-party survey on taxpayer satisfaction has steadily improved, increasing to 87.2 in 2021 from 79.72 in 2012.

Next, I will elaborate on this from the following three respects:

First, we have improved our service philosophy to make tax services more comprehensive. Focusing on taxpayers, we have worked hard to provide convenience and regulate the service philosophy of tax collectors to the maximum and improved tax and fee services.

Second, we continued to improve tax service, making it more convenient. Taxation authorities have launched public tax service campaigns since 2014 for nine consecutive years, and made continuous achievements. We introduced 539 innovative service initiatives, involving 197 items of 54 categories. We streamlined tax materials, reducing material submission by 50% and paper forms by 25%. Matters requiring tax administrative approval were reduced to one from 87, more than 95% of preferential tax treatment items have been changed into ‘for future inspection' from record and the efficiency of tax and fee policies was improved. Particularly when facing the epidemic in 2020, we vigorously promoted non-contact tax payment services and made it a regular practice. In addition to those matters prescribed by the law and those that require offline physical delivery, all tax payment matters are handled without contact, social security payment for enterprises is handled online, and social security payment for individuals is basically handled via cellphone applications.

Third, we have continuously taken innovative measures to protect people's rights and interests to reassure them about paying taxes. We have always regarded protecting taxpayers' legitimate rights and interests as an essential component of our taxation services, actively responded to taxpayers' legitimate rights and interests, and strived to build a fair and equitable taxation environment. We have also continuously worked to improve the complaint mechanism. Compared with 2012, the number of complaints submitted to the taxation department has fallen by 20.4% in 2021. The average time for handling all kinds of complaints was also cut by 50%. We have continued to enforce the law in a strict, procedure-based, impartial and civilized manner. Since 2019, based on pilot programs, we have comprehensively implemented the administrative law enforcement publication system, the recording system of law enforcement throughout the whole process and the legal review system of major law enforcement decisions, in a bid to create a transparent, standardized and law-based taxation environment.

Since the beginning of this year, faced with the pandemic and complicated international situations unseen in a century, the environment for China's economic development has become more complex, severe and uncertain, while more challenges including stabilizing economic growth and commodity prices and promoting employment have been posed to China. The taxation department will work together with large market entities to overcome the difficulties and further carry out theSpring Breeze Campaign for More Convenient Taxation Service, facilitating the development of small- and medium-sized enterprises. We are committed to basically completing implementation of end-of-tax-period VAT credit refunds on a large scale by the end of the first half of this year and thoroughly implementing preferential tax policies, in a bid to ease the burdens and difficulties faced by large market entities, and especially for micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and to play our part in advancing stability on the six fronts and security in the six areas. Thank you.