Objectors said that Chinese private economy has only just begun to develop and many rich people are still at the early stage of accumulating wealth. Most of the rich in society are young or middle-aged people. (Photo: Beijing Business Today)

The Social Investigation Center from China Youth Daily and the News Center from Tencent Company jointly carried out an investigation recently regarding people's reaction to inheritance tax. Among the 8,020 people that participated in the investigation, 52.8% thought that it was "totally unnecessary" for China to levy inheritance tax. Among the rest that supported such tax, 17.7% thought it was not appropriate to impose such tax now. In total, 70.5% of people opposed levying the tax now.

Objectors said that at present, the information needed for levying personal income tax is still not complete. For many rich people, are reluctant to disclose their financial conditions. And both the assets registration system and income monitoring system are very immature at present in China, therefore it is very difficult to calculate and monitor the properties of the rich people.

Objectors said that Chinese private economy has only just begun to develop and many rich people are still at the early stage of accumulating wealth. Most of the rich in society are young or middle-aged people. Their inheritors are still very young or haven't been born yet. Even if China begins to levy inheritance tax now, the tax will not contribute much to the nation's state revenue. On the contrary, it might hurt the development of Chinese private economy and cause a lot of capital to flow out of the country.

The investigation showed that 68.4% of people didn't think inheritance tax as a proper means to adjust income disparity. 56.5% said that the general public might suffer greater economic loss from such tax than the rich people. They held that rich people, the intended target of such tax, might be more inclined and have more useful means to evade such tax. By making use of their available resources, rich people can avoid such tax in various ways. What the objectors are concerned about that if is China levies such inheritance tax, it might not adjust income disparity among people; on the contrary, the general public might become the main tax payers in the end.
 
Editor: Yan