Reform and Improvement of China’s Property Tax System

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-811-0_90How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Property tax reform; Policy recommendations; Income distribution

Abstract

China's property tax reform follows a phased "pilot - legislation - refined pilot" path. But coordination among multiple parties is challenging, and differences in institutional design slow progress. As a key part of the fiscal system, the reform must adhere to tax - optimization rules, fit socio - economic development, and fix structural issues. In China's new development stage, growing income inequality has made the redistributive role of taxation a focus. This study analyzes property tax reform from the perspective of wealth distribution, to clarify its regulatory function and support improvements to the tax system. Analysis reveals three key systemic flaws: (1) structural imbalance between excessive transaction taxes and insufficient holding taxes; (2) overlapping levies and inequitable burden distribution; and (3) suboptimal institutional design. To address these, we propose: (1) streamlining transaction-phase taxes (e.g., reducing Cultivated Land Occupation Tax); (2) increasing holding-phase tax ratios; (3) establishing market-value-based assessments; and (4) implementing broad-based progressive taxation.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jingyi Zhou
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/08/14
TI  - Reform and Improvement of China’s Property Tax System
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Enterprise Management and Economic Development (ICEMED 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 834
EP  - 840
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-811-0_90
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-811-0_90
ID  - Zhou2025
ER  -