Issuance Date: February 13, 2012     Source: China Taxation News
    The pilot reform of personal house property tax has moved forward in Shanghai and Chongqing for one year. It's reported that, under the joint leadership of the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) and the municipal governments and the CPC municipal committees, the local taxation departments join hands with the related departments to strengthen their work in multiple aspects and guarantee the successful development of pilot reform. A nostalgic look shows that the pilot reform has undergone an orderly and steady operation as a whole.
    When the pilot reform was launched, Shanghai created the pilot work group of house property tax and its office, which involved several municipal departments, like finance, local taxation, house property management, construction and transportation, planning and land, public security, civil affairs, human resources and social security, and statistics, to review and confirm the residents' taxable housing. Since January 28, 2011, the individual house purchasers shall apply to the local taxation authorities with all the necessary materials to go through the confirmation formalities of collecting or exempting house property tax before the house property right is registered. Once the taxation authorities have made confirmation, the seal of free search shall be affixed to the application form of housing information search as long as the house property tax is to be reduced and exempted. Then, the individual house purchasers can apply to the house property management departments to obtain their housing data. The taxation organs can check with the related departments like civil affairs and public security the house purchasers' related information on marital status, family members and resident permits. Based on the written search results and other materials provided by individual house purchasers, the taxation organs shall issue the letter of confirmation for tax collection or exemption, and then the house property management departments can handle the registration of house property right. In 2011, about 20,000 housing units were subject to personal house property tax.
    Moreover, Shanghai's taxation departments worked hard to handle the collection of house property tax in 2011. First, improve tax payment service by providing multiple tax payment channels. Besides the taxation window in the real estate trading center, all the tax service halls of taxation departments at the district or county level started to handle the declaration of house property tax in December 2011. These service halls created the green channel for tax service and opened the special window for house property tax declaration and payment. Since December 1, the financial institutions like Bank of Shanghai have started to handle the payment of house property tax at about 600 personal service outlets and www.shfft.com. Second, further improve personnel and equipment, optimize operation process, print and distribute the related business manuals, and standardize consulting service. Third, remind the tax payers to make timely payments via media announcements, special letters and text messages.
    Since the pilot reform of house property tax has drawn much public attention, the taxation departments in Shanghai make considerable efforts to provide consulting service and arrange media publicity. They responded to the local residents' common concerns in the form of Q&A, and designed and organized a series of new reports on pilot reform, and worked harder to publicize and interpret the pilot work, thus creating a sound environment of public opinion for this pilot reform.
    In the course of pilot reform, Chongqing Local Tax Bureau poured increasing efforts into the organization and deployment for collecting personal property tax. First, develop the joint management mechanism of tax collection work among the internal and external departments, and strengthen the coordination and cooperation with external departments like land resources and housing administration, and finance to ensure the successful operation of all the links involved. Second, 12 collection units within urban districts increase the tax collection and management functions at the integrated window for collecting deed tax according to the characteristics of personal property tax, re-set the property tax collection and management procedure for houses in stock and incremental houses, specify the collection mode for taxable houses, enhance the tax collection force at the window, and properly handle policy publicity, business interpretation and IT guarantee. Third, upgrade the existing tax collection and management system, develop the tax source management system for personal property tax, and properly handle the tax collection and management work of new tax type like drawing bills, writing off bills, income enquiry and statistics to guarantee the successful development of tax collection and management work.
    To understand the sources of personal property tax and ensure the successful operation of personal property tax collection and management work, Chongqing Local Tax Bureau also worked together with local land resources and housing administration to check up the independent residential buildings in stock within urban districts, and understand their total unit number, area, price and area concerned. They have delivered the notices of tax payment for those tax payers concerned on two occasions, and spared no efforts to contact such tax payers. Moreover, the publicity work of tax policy and tax collection procedure was further reinforced via TV, network, newspaper, post and door-step service.
    After delivering the notices of tax payment, conducting the publicity of tax policy, strengthening the business training for tax collection staff, and designing tax collection plan and emergency plan, Chongqing Local Tax Bureau launched the personal property tax collection work for independent residential buildings in stock. All the local tax collection units, considering their own situations, explored the tax collection and management mode, innovated and improvement service methods, and handle the tax payment service work earnestly to guarantee the timely collection of all the property taxes concerned. The related statistics show that the tax declaration rate and tax collection rate for personal property tax in Chongqing were both above 99% in 2011.