March 7, 2013
Translated by Zhu Na

China's collected 2.25 trillion yuan in fiscal revenue in the first two months of this year, an increase of 151 billion yuan compared to the same period last year, according to data released by the Ministry of Finance yesterday.

This represented an 7.2 percent increase on the amount collected during the first two months of 2012 and a 5.9 percentage point drop on the pace of growth registered last year.

Of the total revenue, about 2 trillion yuan came in the form of tax receipts, an increase of 5.9 percent compared to the same period last year.  

The Ministry of Finance said the subdued growth in central government revenue, which grew by only 1.6 percent over the two-month period, was due to slowing economic growth and the introduction of certain structural tax cuts in addition to the slowdown in import growth and other factors. Local fiscal revenue growth however, which was up 12.9 percent, was boosted by an uptick in real estate transactions.  

Liu Shangxi (劉尚希), deputy director of finance division of the Ministry of Finance previously said that China's economic growth was slowing and business tax was gradually being changed to value-added tax, both of these long-terms trends will reduce tax revenue and China's overall tax burden will decline somewhat. The rate at whic fiscal and tax revenue grows will also decline and it will be in the single digits in the future.

The data for the combined January-February period revealed that 47.9 billion yuan has been collected in real estate corporate income tax, an increase of 31.4 percent and that land value-added tax and deed tax increased by 42.1 percent and 31.6 percent year-on-year respectively.

Due to an increase in stock market turnover in the first two months of the year, the stock trading stamp tax revenues increased by 71.7 percent over the same period last year, with 8.1 billion yuan being collected.  

Links and Sources
The Beijing News: 前2月全國財政收入增7.2%
Ministry of Finance: 2013年1-2月財政收支情況