Shi Yaowei, director of the tax department under the Ministry of Finance, said among China’s 24 categories of taxes, personal income tax is the most important one for adjusting social property allocation.

The past dozen years witnessed a constantly widening gap between the rich and poor in China. Nowadays, China’s Gini Coefficient (an internationally accepted measurement of income equality) has reached 0.447.

“According to the international accepted level, when a country’s Gini Coefficient is above 0.4, it means the country’s rich-and-poor gap is excessively wide,” said Shi.

The US Gini coefficient hit 0.4 in the 1970’s and hasn’t dropped below, since.

Statistics show that wage earners are China’s mainstream personal income tax payers. In 2004, China’s revenue from personal income taxes was 170 billion yuan (21 billion US dollars), 65 percent of which was collected from salaried workers. The phenomenon went against the fact that 20 percent of China’s population possess 80 percent of social wealth.

News coverage on CCTV9 gave me a chuckle when they included mention of a special category for movie stars.

Liu Huan, one of China’s tax experts, said that the 300 million wage earners have borne the country’s major tax burden. They seldom evade taxes because most of them have had only one income source, which is easy for tax authorities to inspect. Another reason is that, their work units or companies often withhold their taxes in advance before giving them salaries.

I wonder if anyone could write a tax code which isn’t boring stuff? I think dedication to the topic produces bean-counter genes?