China seeks public input on proposed tax threshold changes (3)

Liu said the personal income tax threshold hike is "good news for most people."
"Because the current 2,000-yuan personal income tax threshold is already lower than average living costs in big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing," Liu said.
More than 200 million people, who belong to the working class in China, will benefit from the lifting of the minimum PIT threshold, said Sun Qunyi, secretary general of the labor and wage committee under the China Association for Labor Studies, a non-profit academic institution.
If the personal income tax threshold is lifted, only about 12 percent of the working class will have to pay taxes, down from the current 28 percent, according to officials.
The draft amendment is estimated to cut the country's tax revenue by a total of 120 billion yuan a year, compared to 2010, they say.
China's personal income taxes totaled 483.7 billion yuan last year, accounting for 6.3 percent of the country's annual total tax revenue, according to official figures.
There are also some experts who suggest the proposed tax threshold should be further lifted to as high as 5,000 yuan, a proposal opposed by others.
"It is not the case that the higher personal income tax threshold the better," said Jia Kang, head of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science of the Ministry of Finance.