Chinese Experts Question Forbes Magazine'S Second World Tax Burden In China

Some media reported that the United States

Focus one: has Forbes released the tax list recently?

Response: not released this year, up to date

Reporters inquired about Forbes's (FORBES) English and Chinese websites, and did not find "the list of tax misery index launched by Forbes magazine recently". But we can find out the list of "tax pain index" released by the magazine in 2009. In this list, China's tax pain index is 159, ranking second in 65 countries and regions.

The reporter also asked the editorial department of Forbes's Chinese net on the phone. The head of the Department said that the list of "tax pain index" was held by Forbes headquarters, and has not heard of the new list recently.

Subsequently, the reporter contacted the Forbes Editorial Department of the United States, the editorial department of Alexandra Doti (Alexandra Talty) told reporters: Forbes's latest tax pain index was released in 2009, this year has not yet released the tax list.

According to her introduction, the statistical method of the index is based on the highest marginal tax rates of various regions, and the company income tax, personal income tax, property tax, social insurance tax paid by employers, social insurance tax paid by employees and value-added tax are collected.

Focus two: Forbes "

Response: the list of taxes is less scientific and can not reflect the real situation.

According to the statistical method of Forbes's tax pain index, the highest marginal tax rate is used to calculate the pain index. For example, in 2009, the highest rate of corporate income tax in China was 25%, and the corresponding pain index was 25. According to this method, the personal income tax pain index was 45, the social insurance premium pain index of enterprises was 49, the personal social insurance premium pain index was 23, the value added tax distress index was 17, and the property tax distress index was 0.

Zhang Bin, director of the Tax Research Office of the Institute of Finance and trade of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the tax pain index is an algorithm with poor scientific nature. There are several major defects in reflecting the tax burden.

First, the nominal tax rate chosen by the index is not equivalent to the actual tax rate, and the actual tax rate is often lower than the nominal tax rate.

Two, the highest marginal tax rate applies only to a small proportion of taxpayers, which can not reflect the overall tax burden of a country's residents.

Three, the premise of simple addition is to give each tax the same weight, which is quite different from the actual situation.

Zhang Bin introduced international tax burden.

Zhu Qing, a professor at the school of Finance and finance of Renmin University of China, told reporters that Forbes's practice of adding the highest tax rate to the first rate is quite a number of problems.

Even abroad, many people think that the index is unscientific and unreasonable.

For example, after the index was released in 2009, foreign commentaries said, "adding the tax rate of the VAT and the social insurance tax is equivalent to adding up the cubic foot."

Others comment on this index: "rich charts, erroneous data, and poor analysis".

Zhu Qing said, for example, the highest rate of personal income tax paid by our salaries and salaries is 45%, but the real income level and the marginal tax rate are even less than 0.2% of taxpayers in some big cities.

Focus three: China's tax burden is second worldwide?

Response: according to the international standard "macro tax burden", our tax burden is not high.

According to Zhang Bin, at present, domestic researchers divide the macro tax burden index of China into the statistical caliber of large, medium and small ones: the small macro tax burden, that is, the proportion of tax revenue to GDP.

In 2009, China's tax revenue was 5 trillion and 952 billion 159 million. According to the 2009 GDP final nuclear real figure of 340903 billion yuan, the small bore macro tax burden was 17.46%.

The macro tax burden of medium caliber refers to the general budgetary revenue, that is to say, the proportion of financial revenue that accounts for GDP.

In 2009, China's fiscal revenue was 6 trillion and 851 billion 830 million yuan, accounting for 20.1% of GDP.

Macro tax burden refers to the proportion of all government revenues to GDP.

In addition to general budgetary revenue, it also includes government fund income (including land pfer income), social insurance fund payment income, extra budgetary funds incorporated into financial account management, and state-owned capital operating budget revenue.

According to the publicly released statistics, in 2009, the latter four incomes were 1 trillion and 833 billion 504 million yuan, 12780 billion yuan, 641 billion 465 million yuan, and 98 billion 870 million yuan (including 60 billion yuan of special capital income of telecom enterprises reorganization), together with revenue, the total government revenue totaled about 10 trillion and 703 billion 670 million yuan, and the large diameter macro tax was 31.4%.

Internationally, there are two kinds of statistical macro tax burden, one is the statistics of the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD), and the similar index in China is "tax revenue + social insurance contribution income", which accounts for GDP share.

The other is the definition of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Government revenue includes four categories: taxation, compulsory social security contributions, donation and other income. China's similar index is the macro tax burden.

According to the statistical caliber of OECD, the macro tax burden of the United States, Japan, Germany and France in 2007 were 27.9%, 28.3%, 36% and 43.5% respectively.

According to this standard, China's macro tax burden in 2009 was 21.7%, lower than those in the above-mentioned countries.

According to the statistical caliber of IMF, in 2007, the average proportion of all government revenue to GDP in developed countries was 45.28%, and the average proportion of government revenue in developing countries accounted for GDP was 35.6%.

According to this standard, China's large caliber macro tax in 2009 was about 31.4%, lower than the average level of developed and developing countries.

Zhu Qing said that according to the latest statistics, China's macro tax burden (similar to OECD's statistics caliber) in 2010 was about 21.9%, which was nearly 13 percentage points lower than that of the 30 member states of the OECD statistics in 2008, accounting for 34.8% of the average tax burden.

Therefore, from the macro tax burden index, China's macro tax burden is not high compared with that of developed countries.

It can be seen that no matter which way it is adopted, the level of China's tax burden can not be ranked in the forefront of the world.

Focus four: does the tax burden determine the degree of "pain"?

Response: we should not get entangled in the tax burden. We should pay more attention to whether the structure of fiscal expenditure is reasonable.

Zhang Bin believes that in addition to the differences in statistical caliber, each country has different national conditions and is at different stages of development. Whether the tax burden is heavy or light can not make a simple international comparison.

At present, there is not enough evidence to judge how high the tax burden is.

For example, some Nordic countries have a tax burden of 50%, but because of high welfare, people do not have much opinion about the high tax burden.

Some people feel that the tax burden is heavier. There may be three reasons: first, the proportion of non tax revenue is relatively high at the present stage; the form of government revenue needs to be further standardized; two, the distribution of tax burden is unbalanced, and the tax burden of small and medium enterprises and middle and low income groups is relatively heavy. Three, the pparency of the government budget is low, and the structure and efficiency of fiscal expenditure are still far from the ideal state of public hope.

"The key to macro tax burden is not how much revenue is collected, but the improvement of budgetary system and the improvement of fiscal expenditure structure."

Zhao Xinge, a professor of finance at CEIBS, said: "our tax structure is unreasonable.

Generally speaking, the international tax system is a system of numbers. If we get more, we will get more taxes.

But we are different. As long as we reach a certain bar, it is a tax level, and we have to pay at this tax level.

This may lead to a few dollars more tax on your income. "

Zhu Qing said that people generally benefit from the government's livelihood expenditure, such as education, health care, pension and so on. Their benefits from the government's expenditure on national defense, economic construction and administration are not easy to feel.

Therefore, when a country's financial expenditure on people's livelihood is small, people often feel that they do not benefit directly from the government's use of tax, and they will feel heavier tax burden.

This objectively requires the government to speed up the pformation of the mode of economic development, and constantly improve the structure of fiscal expenditure, improve the efficiency of tax revenue, and maximize the tax to the people and the people.