Shanghai's innovative industries may benefit from preferential taxation policies amid plans for an upgraded online service system, the city's taxation bureau said yesterday.
"For projects and individuals that have the ability to make contributions to innovation, the tax bureau will spare no effort to support them," Guo Jianfei, chief of the city's State Taxation Bureau and Local Taxation Bureau, said, adding that the preferential policies will be the key to taxation reform.
In the first five months of this year, more than 360,000 research and development projects from 6,800 companies benefited from tax cuts, a separate release from the tax bureau said.
The amount of cut rose 47 percent from a year earlier to touch 12.3 billion yuan ($1.8 billion), data showed.
The Shanghai tax bureau is the only municipal taxation branch in China that combines functions of both national taxation and local taxation for better efficiency.
The tax bureau will also introduce an updated online tax system that will make commonly used tax items fully online by the end of 2016, Guo said.
The system currently allows tax payers to set up a tax account without administrative approvals, getting electronic invoices and cross-region taxation services.
