Shanghai's tax revenue declines amid reform

Shanghai's annual tax revenue declined about 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) in 2012, after the city launched a pilot tax reform program to replace business tax with value-added tax, which aims to avoid duplicated levies. Hu Lanfang, deputy director of the city's tax bureau, said that a total of 159,000 companies were included in the pilot program by the end of 2012. Taxation was clearly reduced for small-scale taxpayers and services-export companies, the Shanghai-based China Business News reported on Wednesday. Another 10 provinces and regions are likely to join the tax reform program soon, the Finance Ministry said last week.

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