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of the taxpayers are located in the 5 percent and 10 percent rate bands, thesetaxpayers only contributed about just below 30 percent of total PIT revenue.Restructuring the PIT Rate Schedule on Wage Income
The estimated model above can be used to simulate the revenue impact of allpossible changes to the rate structure, including setting completely new widthsfor any rate band one may wish to consider. However, for illustrative pur-poses and ease of comparing the distribution of tax burdens across rate bandsunder alternative rate structures with that under the existing rate structure,the existing band widths for all rates have been retained for the simulationexercise illustrated below. In other words, a reduction in the number of ratesis achieved by simply collapsing existing rates without defining new widthsfor the rate bands.
Table 4 presents three broadly revenue-neutral rate-restructuring options:
(1) a three-rate option comprising 10 percent, 20 percent, and 30 percent; (2)a two-rate option comprising 15 percent and 25 percent; and (3) a flat-rateoption. Under all options, it is assumed that the basic allowance has beenraised to RMB1,300 per month, or RMB15,600 per year. This raise servestwo useful purposes: first, it removes all those in the existing 5 percent rateband—comprising almost 60 percent of the total number of current PIT pay-ers—from the tax net, thus benefiting the least well off as well as reducingcompliance and collection costs; and second, it allows the marginal tax rateon those in the existing 10 percent rate band to be raised (if necessary) with-out necessarily increasing their average tax rate. Coincidentally, a basic al-lowance of RMB1,300 per month also happens to broadly maintain the realvalue of the basic allowance that was provided in 1987 under the personalincome regulatory tax (see above). Raising the basic allowance further, say,to eliminate the existing 10 percent rate band, would be very costly in rev-enue terms (losing close to 30 percent of the present total PIT collection) andwould require a significant jump in the marginal tax rates on all other tax-payers for a revenue-neutral outcome. Under the three-rate option, taxpayersin the existing 5 percent and 10 percent rate bands would be made better off,while those in the existing 15 percent rate band would see their average taxrate increase only slightly (by 0.7 percentage points). The taxpayers whowould be most adversely affected under this option would be those in theexisting 20 percent and 25 percent rate bands, but even for these taxpayersaverage tax rates would rise by at most seven percentage points. Under thetwo-rate option, no taxpayer would see his average tax rate rise by more thanthree percentage points, and those in the existing 10 percent rate band would