The Guangzhou municipal government announced the names of the city's top 100 corporate income tax payers at a press conference held on Wednesday.

The Guangdong Tobacco Factory topped the list by paying 4.38 billion yuan (US$55 million) in tax.

Surprisingly, the 12 real-estate developers on the list accounted for only 3.55 percent of the total profit tax paid last year.

Only five of the 12 real-estate developers paid more than 100 million yuan in tax, the other seven paid around 80 million yuan each.

Luo Yuhong, vice director general of the provincial local tax bureau, said the tax paid by real-estate companies was lower than expected.

"There is great potential behind the low percentage," Luo said.

He said the reason was the fact that there are more than 1,000 developers in Guangzhou, and profits are shared by a great number of real-estate companies.

"Also, big real-estate companies set up branch companies for each project and it's the branch companies rather than the headquarter pay the tax. But this would not be revealed on the top 100 list."

"Actually, the total revenue from real-estate companies reached 6.9 billion yuan last year, nearly 17 percent of the total revenue."

Guangzhou Honda Automobile Co., Guangdong Power Group Corperation and China Mobile are listed No. 2 to 4 on the list, and all paid more than 4 billion yuan in tax respectively.

The total tax paid by the top 100 is 44.2 billion yuan, accounting for 33.9 percent of the city's total tax revenue.

The top 100 list doesn't include tax paid after government auditing.

Editor: Yan