New personal tax policy
The government work report mentioned in the suggestions on government work that the threshold of personal income tax should be raised.
Shi Xbin, Vice Minister of Finance, said at the press conference of the two sessions that to what extent the threshold will be raised, policy suggestions will be put forward according to the changes in residents' basic living consumption level. This tax reform highlights the new connotation of special deduction, and the first choice is to focus on children's education, serious illness medical care and other aspects that people need and care most. The reform will transform the classified tax system into a comprehensive and classified personal income tax system, and the next step will be to speed up the tax reform plan and start the revision of the personal income tax law.
Liu 21st, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and president of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Science, believes that the tax reform must comprehensively balance the "money bag" of the state and the "money bag" of the individual. The adjustment of special deduction, tax rate range and tax method is subject to many factors, such as the need to attract talents, the need to simplify the tax system and the expectation of society for fair adjustment, and should be comprehensively considered and steadily promoted.
The threshold of personal income tax is an easy-to-understand statement, and the more accurate statement is the standard for deducting or exempting personal income tax from expenses. For the working class, it has the most direct and intuitive relationship with the level of personal tax burden, so it has become the focus of attention from all walks of life. Raising the personal income tax exemption is a response to the public's demand to reduce personal tax burden, which is conducive to steadily raising the income level of residents and enhancing the people's sense of happiness and acquisition. The setting of tax exemption mainly considers the taxpayer's cost and basic living expenses. The current personal income tax exemption is adjusted to 20 1 1. In recent years, with the economic development, rising prices and income growth, people's basic living needs and expenditures are also increasing year by year, and the current standard of exemption is already too low. To ensure that people's basic living standards will not be affected, it is necessary to increase the personal income tax exemption.
However, the exemption amount is only one of the tax elements of personal income tax, and it is not in the main position in the establishment of personal income tax system. Simply raising the exemption amount is simple and beneficial to the people, but it is not conducive to the improvement of the tax system and the income redistribution function of personal income tax. Compared with the previous personal income tax reform that only focused on the adjustment of exemption amount, this government work report further proposed to increase the deduction of special expenses such as children's education and serious illness medical care, which is conducive to further improving the fairness of personal income tax and also means that the personal income tax reform has finally made substantial progress.
The significance of increasing the deduction of special expenses lies in improving the tax equity among families with different burdens. For different individuals, even with the same income, they may face different family burdens such as children's education, medical care and housing, and their tax payment ability is not the same. It is beneficial to balance the tax burden of families with different burdens and improve the fairness of the personal income tax system to include the expenses such as children's education and serious illness medical care that are most deeply felt by the general public in the pre-tax deduction range of personal income tax and set reasonable deduction standards.
Raising the exemption amount and increasing the deduction of special expenses is the perfection of the pre-tax deduction of personal income tax, which is only a part of the personal income tax reform, but not the whole of the personal income tax reform. Personal income tax still faces the need of comprehensive deepening reform. Personal income tax is an important tax to raise fiscal revenue, and it is also one of the most favorable tools for the government to adjust income distribution. The two complement each other and are indispensable. With the construction of Socialism with Chinese characteristics entering a new era, it is of great significance to speed up the reform of individual income tax. It is an important starting point to solve the main social contradictions in the new period, narrow the income gap and achieve balanced and full development; It is also the basic system of modern national governance system, which is conducive to enhancing people's sense of participation in national governance and promoting the realization of good governance goals such as social fairness and justice.
Personal income tax reform measures include
The first is to merge and simplify some tax items. Appropriate income classification can reflect the real tax paying ability of taxpayers. The current 1 1 income subcategory can be divided into several categories, for example, personal labor income can be divided into one category, including wage income, labor remuneration income and remuneration income. Divide property income into one category, including income from production and operation of individual industrial and commercial households, income from contracted operation and leasing operation of enterprises and institutions, income from royalties, income from interest dividends, income from property leasing and income from property transfer. Classify accidental income with other income.
Second, improve the pre-tax deduction system of "basic deduction+special deduction". At present, the items deducted before tax include basic pension, medical care, unemployment insurance, housing accumulation fund and occupational annuity, enterprise annuity and commercial health insurance within a certain limit. In the future, it will be included in commercial endowment insurance. A great progress of this reform is to increase the special deduction, including the expenses of supporting the elderly, medical expenses for serious illness and children's education, thus reducing the burden of the "two-child" family. There are also voices that hope to include the interest expenses of housing mortgage loans, personal career development and re-education expenses into special deduction items.
At present, there are many suggestions to set up a standard index adjustment mechanism for the threshold, and make dynamic and flexible adjustments in combination with the price level and inflation level to reduce the impact of economic fluctuations on the living standards of residents. There are also suggestions to implement the threshold of regional differentiation. Whether these suggestions can be implemented remains to be seen.
Third, optimize the tax rate structure. On the basis of the tax rate structure stipulated in the current individual income tax law, the marginal tax rate should be adjusted appropriately, the progressive range should be simplified, and the applicable tax rate for all kinds of income should be determined reasonably.
Fourth, explore the introduction of household expenditure declaration system. Due to the change of family structure and the complexity of family economic structure in China, it is difficult to fully implement the family comprehensive declaration in a short time. On the basis of maintaining the individual as the taxpayer, the association will gradually allow couples to jointly declare the expenses related to family support for the elderly, children's education, housing mortgage loan interest and so on. And deducted between husband and wife or by one party, and both husband and wife pay taxes separately.
Fifth, improve the tax-related information system and collection and management mechanism. First of all, we will promote the sharing of tax-related information among industry and commerce, public security, justice, customs, social security, banking, housing management, securities and other departments, realize cross-departmental and cross-regional tax-related information networking, and establish and improve the natural person income and property information system. The verification of the authenticity of pre-tax deduction information also puts forward higher requirements for the data analysis, investigation ability and collection and management ability of tax departments. In addition, it is necessary to improve the supporting policies such as the popularization of individual tax numbers, the binding of tax-related information, and the constraint of credit system.
To sum up, we can clearly know that personal income tax reform is a hot topic in the two sessions this year, and it is also under constant discussion and decision-making. Raising the tax threshold is the standard for deducting expenses or exempting personal income tax.