China likely to expand coverage of pilot cross-border E-commerce import tax

BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) - China is likely to expand coverage of the present import tax policies applied in cities piloting cross-border E-commerce business to the whole country, reported Economic Information Daily Friday.

So far, Chinese authorities including the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Commerce have reached consensus over the matter and relevant plans have been in place to facilitate their objective to reduce regional differences in related policies and spur cross-border E-commerce nationwide.

As the newspaper said, they also planned to raise by 30-50 percent the personal postal articles tax rate, still lower than general import taxes rates, for E-commerce operators in pilot cities to encourage traditional importers to transform into cross-border E-commerce importers.

For different goods, China's customs require 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent and 50 percent of personal postal articles tax, which, different from the general good importing taxes consisting mainly of value-added tax and import duty, means merely 10 percent of tax for most imported goods and exempts goods with less than 50 yuan tax payment from being taxed.

For now, China needs to unify taxation over import in cross-border E-commerce as after all, the personal postal articles tax is a tax of interim implementation, says an expert.

If a unified tax policy regime is formed for cross-border E-commerce sector, China's special customs supervision zones and bonded zones can also start bonded import of cross-border E-commerce operators, which will widen coverage of the preferential policies and ease the great logistics, inspection and quarantine pressures of cities piloting cross-border E-commerce business.

Besides, some localities have huge demands for importing daily necessities but have no qualification of the kind thus the nationally unified tax policies for import by cross-border E-commerce operators can better spur consumption.

Up to now, many Chinese localities have begun planning import by cross-border E-commerce, which may increase their import tax incomes once cross-border E-commerce prospers across China in the future. (Edited by Duan Jing, duanjing@xinhua.org)