Deputies from Public Finances Directorate-General of France (DGFIP) and from French and Chinese enterprises widely praised China’s efforts to improve tax service, after their recent meeting with a Chinese tax delegation.

With China increasingly engaging in world affairs and closer international taxation cooperation, tax service in China has been attracting growing attention over the world, especially after Wang Jun, Commissioner of the State Administration of Taxation (SAT), signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax on behalf of the Chinese government at OECD headquarters in Paris in 2013

DGFIP officials and enterprise representatives thought highly of China’s newly published National County-level Tax Administrations Tax Service Standard. They regard the Standard as a significant action. With the help of unifying tax service standards across the country, it will benefit both taxpayers and collectors while improving tax environment in China.

“The Standard will benefit those enterprises at home and abroad. In other words, it will not only work for local enterprises but also help foreign invested enterprises in China”, commented Daoxin Hu, the head of the delegation and the director of Jiangsu provincial office, SAT, at the meeting.

The Standard, following the trends that tax administration around the world switching from regulation-oriented to service-oriented style, meets the Chinese government’s demands to transform its functions and improve working style, and summarizes the methods and experience of tax service in the past decades. It is the first time that tax authorities across the country have unified tax service items, procedures and time limits, and set up basic and advanced service standards, which indicates the end of the chaos in tax service standards across China and signifies a new start of the process of modernizing tax service.

The idea “maximizes the convenience of taxpayers, maximizes the regulation of tax administrators” stated in the Standard has won approvals by DGFIP tax officials. Therefore, DGFIP officials were pleased to say that the Standard, while benefitting taxpayers, played an important role in clearly guiding both taxpayers and tax administrators in unbalanced and complex environments across China.

Since October 1, the Standard has applied to thousands of county-level tax administrations, causing hundreds of items and thousands of rules in tax service affected. The Standard adjusts, reduces, compresses and optimizes tax service. For instance, it adjusts the process of investigation and verification to increase efficiency, the China tax delegation introduced when meeting with enterprise representatives.

In order to save taxpayers’ efforts and increase taxation efficiency, the Standard has streamlined procedures, simplified steps, reduced time, and improved results by transferring to markets, society and grass-roots what is not expected to do by tax administrations. On average, it can reduce by over 30 percent of the documents, procedures, frequency and consumed time for taxpayers, the delegation explained.

Enterprises welcome the Standard. Thanks to increased efficiency and reduced burden brought by the Standard, taxpayers can pay taxes more effectively and conveniently, enterprise representatives said. What is more, the Standard enhances the transparency of tax administration in China, increases the credibility of tax authorities, and improves convenience and reliability of investment in China, saidFrench enterprise representatives. Huawei, a Chinese enterprise which pays much attention to tax policy and service in China, also stated that the Standard will also urge tax administrations to safeguard the interest of taxpayers.

Tax authorities and enterprise representatives both agreed that the Standard will take tax service in China to a brand new stage, provide investors and entrepreneurs with better tax environment, and facilitate the process of taxation modernization in China.