Taxpayer is the abbreviation of taxpayer, which refers to the natural person and legal person who pay taxes directly to the government according to the tax law, and belongs to one of the basic elements of the tax system.

In order to levy taxes, the state should not only stipulate in the tax law what to levy taxes on (that is, the object of taxation), but also stipulate to whom to pay taxes.

Units and individuals directly liable for tax payment are called taxpayers. Taxpayer is the main body of tax legal relationship in China and the main undertaker of national finance. Whether China's tax rule of law is progressing well, whether the state's fiscal revenue and expenditure are running smoothly, whether taxpayers' rights are effectively protected and whether their obligations are effectively fulfilled are closely related.

In the individual income tax law, the taxpayer of wages and salaries is an individual with wages and salaries, and the taxpayer of property tax is the owner or user of property rights. Deed tax is a kind of property tax levied on real estate whose ownership has changed, and its taxpayer is the property owner. For the same tax, taxpayers can be enterprises, units and individuals, such as value-added tax, products produced and sold by enterprises, and taxpayers are enterprises; For products sold by individuals, taxpayers are individuals.

VAT taxpayers can also be divided into general taxpayers and small-scale taxpayers according to the annual sales standards and sound accounting.