The Tax Reform Carries The Public'S Expectation Of Fairness In Income Distribution.

As a tool to regulate income distribution, personal income tax is an important means to achieve social equity and justice. For a long time, because of the low exemptions and unreasonable collection methods, personal tax has often been criticized as a "payroll tax" for robbing the poor and making the rich rich. Personal tax is related to everyone's vital interests, and the voice of reform has always been very high. It is undoubtedly the direction of individual tax reform that we should reduce the tax burden of middle and lower income persons, appropriately increase the regulation of high-income earners and block the channels of informal income.

Recently, the State Council issued the "implementation of opinions on stimulating the vitality of key groups and promoting the income increase of urban and rural residents". The opinion put forward that we should further reduce the tax burden of the middle and lower income earners, at the same time, we should appropriately increase the tax adjustment efforts for the high income earners, block the informal income channels of the high-income earners, and bring into play the function of income adjustment. After that, media reports said that the annual income of 120 thousand yuan can be called a high-income group, and will be focused on the short-term and medium-term objectives of the tax reform. Soon, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of taxation experts rumor said that this view is misreading, 120 thousand yuan is not to divide the boundaries of high and low income groups.

In fact, all the individual tax amendments and the Ministry of Finance and the state Tax administration Many of the documents do not have the idea of delineating high-income groups with more than 120 thousand annual income, but many people still worry that they are "high income", which means that the tax reform carries the public's expectation of fairness in income distribution. Because the gap between the eastern and central and western regions is very large, the income level of residents is also quite different. For example, in the three or four tier cities, the annual salary of more than ten million yuan can be regarded as high income, but in the "northern Guangzhou and Shenzhen" and most second tier cities, the annual salary of more than 10 million yuan is not high.

Take a young person who rented in Beijing for example. In Huilongguan outside the North Fifth Ring Road, rent a more than 10 square meter small single room, the monthly rent will be 2000 yuan. If you don't want to spend two or three hours on the road every day and choose to rent houses near the company, the rent will probably account for 1/3 or more of the salary. If there is a housing family, the situation will be more complicated. Maybe the annual salary is more than ten million yuan just enough to repay the mortgage. So, define this income group as High-income Obviously, it is unreasonable.

The personal tax reform is not just to increase the exemption rate and adjust the tax rate. The key is to establish a comprehensive and classified personal income tax system, and introduce differential deductions, such as meeting the basic housing mortgage interest, housing rent, family support, raising children expenses, and the re education cost of individual career development. Only in this way can we make the tax reform play a good role in regulating the distribution of income, so that the general public can feel the role of fairness and justice played by individual tax adjustment.

The reason why the public is worried about "high income" lies in the unreasonable way of levying the current personal tax. The collection of personal tax in China is basically dependent on the payment of enterprises and institutions. Ex ante deduction 。 It is easy to avoid tax avoidance for a truly high income group through diversified channels. The blue book published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in May pointed out that the actual income tax paid by high-income groups is very low, and many high-income taxpayers do not even pay any personal income tax. Finally, the personal tax burden mostly falls on the single wage earners. Therefore, changing the way of individual tax collection and increasing the tax collection for this group of people should also be the focus of individual tax reform.

10 years ago, Li Qiang, a professor and sociologist at Tsinghua University, put forward that China's social structure was "inverted T-shaped" and that the majority of the society was the bottom. This social structure is not conducive to social stability, deviating from the goal of common prosperity, and also one of the root causes of various social problems. 10 years later, Li Qiang corrected his view and put forward that China has entered the "zigzag" society, because the proportion of middle-income groups has improved. The ideal social structure is "olive shape", and the crowd at the bottom and top of the society is in the minority, and the middle income group is the majority. The key to building an olive shaped society is to cultivate middle income groups and reduce the proportion of low-income groups. To achieve this goal, the personal tax reform also needs to be adjusted accordingly.