Personal income tax is a kind of tax classified according to different tax objects. It taxes the income of natural persons. Individual income tax law refers to the general name of legal norms that adjust the social relationship between tax authorities and natural persons in the process of individual income tax collection and management. The following is what I arranged for you for your reference.

Fan: the choice of individual income tax payers

Abstract: Focusing on the future reform direction of individual income tax payers, this paper compares the advantages and disadvantages of individual and family taxpayers, and looks for individual taxpayers in line with China's current national conditions. On the basis of consulting a large number of documents and analyzing advanced experience and mature tax system at home and abroad, this paper holds that the system of separate taxation and consolidated declaration of husband and wife's salary income with family as taxpayer is the best choice for the reform of individual income tax taxpayers in China.

[Keywords:] tax reform; Personal income tax; tax payer

1 Selection and comparison of individual income tax payers: individuals and families

1. 1 individual income tax payer

With the continuous evolution and development of individual income tax payers around the world and the provisions of the current individual income tax law, there are three main types of individual income tax payers: individuals, families and taxpayers' choices.

1. 1. 1 individual as the tax unit.

Taking an individual as a taxpayer means taking an individual as a taxpayer of personal income tax, and only deducting all the income obtained by the taxpayer from the income allowed by the tax law for tax declaration. At present, China's individual income tax law only allows individuals to pay taxes. In addition, Japan, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Canada have also adopted this system internationally. Among them, Japan's personal income tax system is relatively mature and has rich experience in tax design and tax collection and management. Japan's comprehensive income tax system with individuals as the tax unit is not completely comprehensive. At the same time, it is supplemented by classified collection, that is, most of taxpayers' income is comprehensively collected and special items are classified. In the aspect of expense deduction, cost deduction and livelihood deduction are designed, which not only fully consider the direct cost of obtaining various incomes, but also consider the difference of living burden of different families. Comprehensive taxation, supplemented by the principle of classification and perfect pre-tax deduction mechanism, not only improves the efficiency of tax collection and management, but also reduces the collection cost, which also conforms to the principle of tax fairness and affordability.

1. 1.2 Take the family as the tax unit.

Taking the family as the tax payer means that all the income obtained by all family members is regarded as taxable income, and the balance after deducting the special items allowed by the tax law is used as taxable income of individual income tax for tax declaration and tax payment. At present, France, the Philippines and other countries insist on taking the family as the tax unit internationally. In France, for example, the French individual income tax law clearly stipulates that taxpayers must jointly declare and pay taxes on a family basis. French personal income tax law introduced the family coefficient system when calculating the taxable amount, that is, set a reasonable coefficient value for each family member, with the coefficient of 1 for adults and 0.5 for children, and then divide the total income of all family members by the family coefficient to get the taxable income. For example, in France, the total monthly income of a couple and a family of three with 1 children is 45,000 yuan, and the family coefficient of the couple and children in this family is 1, so the family coefficient of this family of three is 2.5. Therefore, it can be calculated that the taxable income of this family this month is1800045000 ÷ 2.5 =18000 yuan. It can be seen that the marital status of taxpayers and the number of children they raise directly affect the level of personal income tax payable. The larger the family population, the greater the family coefficient, and the smaller the taxable income calculated under the same total family income, the less the taxable amount, which fully embodies the principle of tax affordability.

1. 1.3 instead of tax unit

Taxpayers can choose a taxpayer, that is, taxpayers can choose a taxpayer to declare and pay taxes within the scope stipulated by the tax law, and each taxpayer has designed a corresponding tax rate. The advantage of this system is that taxpayers can choose an optimal tax paying unit according to their own life and marital status when filing personal income tax returns. At present, the personal income tax in the United States adopts this declaration system. In the United States, taxpayers can choose the tax payment unit suitable for their family situation from five types: head of household declaration, married joint declaration, married separate declaration, widowed declaration and single declaration. For example, the same married couple can choose to declare tax separately, or they can choose to declare tax jointly after combining their income. This declaration system of alternative taxpayers provides taxpayers with sufficient planning space, thus stimulating taxpayers' awareness of independent tax payment. Of course, the tax design of various tax units makes the American tax system more complicated, which greatly increases the cost of tax collection and management and the compliance cost of taxpayers. In essence, the alternative tax unit implemented in the United States is the combination of individual tax unit and family tax unit. Moreover, this tax design is too complicated and the cost of tax collection and management is high. China does not have the environment and conditions to implement this tax collection and management model. Therefore, this paper mainly studies two tax systems: individual tax units and family tax units.

1.2 Advantages and disadvantages of taking individuals as tax units

1.2. 1 Advantages of taking individuals as tax units

1 conforms to the principle of marital neutrality.

The principle of marriage neutrality means that the choice of individual income tax payers will not affect people's attitude towards marriage, that is, the determination of tax payers cannot bring additional tax burden to taxpayers with different marital status. Taking an individual as the tax payer means that everyone only declares and pays taxes on his own income, that is, the income earned by one spouse will not affect the tax payable of the other. This tax system fully embodies the principle of individualism and has a good marriage neutrality.

2. The collection and management is simple, which is convenient for tax source monitoring.

Taking individuals as the tax unit only involves the economic behavior of independent individuals, that is, in tax collection and management, it is cheap for both parties to tax one family member without considering the income of other family members. At the same time, it is easier for tax authorities to obtain personal income information when monitoring tax sources, which is convenient for withholding the income obtained by taxpayers at the source and preventing the loss of tax sources.

1.2.2 Disadvantages of taking individuals as tax units

1 The income composition difference of family members is not considered, resulting in horizontal unfairness.

Although the tax collection and management model with individuals as taxpayers is simple and transparent, it does not take into account the income composition differences of taxpayers' family members, resulting in horizontal unfairness in tax collection and management. The following will take wages and salaries as an example to illustrate how the total personal income tax paid by each family is different when the total family income is the same and the income composition of family members is different. From the above table, it can be intuitively seen that under the tax collection and management mode with individuals as the taxpayer, when the total family income is the same, the greater the income gap between husband and wife, the heavier the tax burden of the extended family; On the contrary, the smaller the income gap between husband and wife, the lighter the family tax burden. This is because the wage and salary income in personal income tax adopts progressive tax rate, and the higher the income of families with wide income gap, the higher the marginal tax rate and the heavier the tax burden. Therefore, this way of tax collection and management may lead taxpayers to change their economic behavior in order to avoid taxes, which violates the principle of tax neutrality.

(2) The indifferent exemption system does not take into account the difference of the taxpayer's family burden.

China's current classified income tax system, which takes individuals as the taxpayer unit, does not consider the differences of taxpayers' family burdens, and it is difficult to reflect the overall burden level of taxpayers. A family's ability to pay taxes is not only directly related to the total income of the family, but also indirectly affected by the family composition factors. For example, the working ability of family members, the physical condition of family members, the number of people to support, living expenses and other factors. Because China's personal income tax is classified, deducted and taxed, and there is no tax reduction or exemption for special items, the role of personal income tax in adjusting income distribution, especially adjusting excessive income and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, has not been well played, and sometimes it even plays a "reverse adjustment" role. For example, both Party A and Party B are ordinary wage earners with a monthly income of 7,000 yuan. Party A is single and has almost no family responsibilities. And B is the head of a family of five, with parents to support and children to support. In this case, B's living burden is obviously much heavier than A's, so their ability to pay taxes must be different. However, according to the current Individual Income Tax Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), the monthly individual income tax payable by both parties is the same, which is 7000-3500×10%-105 = 245 yuan. Seeing the big from the small, there are still many unfair phenomena in the actual operation of China's current personal income tax system with individuals as tax units.

Both husband and wife evade taxes by transferring income.

As mentioned above, it has been made clear that under the tax collection and management mode with individuals as taxpayers, the greater the income gap between husband and wife, the heavier the tax burden of large families under the same total family income. In this way, couples in income disparity families will try their best to transfer and disperse taxable income, narrow the income gap between husband and wife, and seek a lower marginal tax rate, so as to achieve the purpose of paying less taxes. China's current tax payment system just provides an opportunity for such families.

1.3 advantages and disadvantages of taking the family as the tax unit

1.3. 1 Advantages of taking the family as the tax unit

1 rich in horizontal fairness.

Family is the basic economic unit, and the economic burden of family seriously restricts the taxpayer's ability to pay taxes. Adopting the tax collection and management mode of family joint tax payment can fully consider the difference of each family's economic burden and fairly measure the taxpayer's negative tax payment ability. In addition, as long as the total income of a family remains unchanged, the tax burden of the whole family will remain unchanged no matter how the income is distributed between husband and wife. This not only fully considers the income composition and family burden differences of family members, but also avoids tax avoidance among family members through the division and transfer of assets or income, thus preventing the loss of tax sources.

2 in line with the principle of tax economic efficiency.

The principle of economic efficiency of taxation means that taxation should be conducive to the effective allocation of resources and the effective operation of economic mechanisms. When the personal income tax adopts the tax collection and management mode of family joint tax payment, in order to maximize the economic efficiency of the family, both husband and wife will choose the most favorable work combination mode for the family according to their own actual situation: both husband and wife go out to work at the same time or one of them stays at home to take care of it. It can be seen that family joint tax payment can maximize the welfare of a family and realize the effective allocation of labor resources than individual tax payment.

1.3.2 disadvantages of taking the family as the tax unit

1 does not conform to the principle of marriage neutrality.

As mentioned above, when the income gap between husband and wife is large, family joint tax payment is conducive to reducing the tax burden; When the income gap between husband and wife is small, family joint tax payment will increase the tax burden. In this way, the choice of individual income tax unit will bring additional tax burden to taxpayers with different marital status, thus affecting taxpayers' attitude towards marriage, which does not conform to the principle of marriage neutrality.

2. Excessive floating population causes high family taxation costs.

With the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization and the continuous development of urban transportation, more and more rural laborers go out to work and urban white-collar workers choose to work in different places, which makes the mobility of labor, population and families in China more and more. According to statistics, at present, China's floating population exceeds 200 million, which has changed the traditional family structure in China and produced many new family types that span space and geographical location, such as empty nesters, left-behind children, and husband and wife separation. In this case, it is difficult for the tax authorities to grasp the economic situation of each member of the family in different places, and it is not convenient to make comprehensive statistics on the economic situation of the whole family. If the family pays taxes together, it will increase the workload of tax collectors and greatly increase the cost of tax collection and management.

It is difficult to know the income of the same family member in different places.

How to collect and sort out the income information of the same family members in different places has always been the biggest technical problem in the transformation of individual income tax units from individuals to families. At present, there are a large number of "separation of people and households" and "income from different places" in China. Under the mode of tax collection and management, how to obtain the income information of the same family members in different places and tax them together has become the most difficult technical obstacle to overcome. In addition, the tax authorities have not established information exchange channels with banks, financial institutions and other relevant departments, so it is difficult to grasp the taxpayer's real family property records, especially dividends, interests, bonuses and other income beyond monitoring, resulting in oversight and a large loss of tax sources.

Under the current classified tax system, it is difficult to determine the total amount of expenses deduction.

Taxing by family means collecting the income of all family members, and then uniformly taxing after deducting the total necessary living expenses of the whole family. However, China's current classified income tax system divides all taxable income of taxpayers into different types according to their respective nature and characteristics, and the deduction standard of each type is different. It can be seen that it is difficult to comprehensively consider the total amount of expenses deducted by the whole family under the classified collection model. Moreover, with the acceleration of modernization and the constant changes of society, the family structure in China is also constantly changing, gradually showing the characteristics of diversification. Implementing family joint tax payment means classifying families with different structures and formulating brand-new expense deduction standards, which is undoubtedly an arduous task.

2. Suggestions on the reform of individual income tax payers in China

On the one hand, there are many disadvantages in the current tax collection and management model with individuals as taxpayers in China, which urgently needs reform under the background of the new round of tax reform; On the other hand, although the recently favored family joint tax declaration system is horizontal and fair, and can make up for the shortcomings of the current tax system to a certain extent, it is not marriage neutral and will "distort" the economic behavior of taxpayers to a certain extent, so simply taking families as taxpayers is not the best choice for individual income tax payers in China. To sum up, it is the main direction of the future reform of individual income tax payers in China to implement the combined declaration system of separate taxation of husband and wife's wages and salaries.

2. 1 Adopt the combined declaration system of husband and wife's wage income being taxed separately.

Taking the family as the tax unit means that the income of husband and wife should be taxed together, and the overall tax burden after the income of husband and wife is taxed together may rise or fall compared with that when the husband and wife pay taxes alone, which affects people's attitude towards marriage to some extent. In order to make the family's joint tax payment conform to the principle of marriage neutrality, Taiwan Province Province of China has implemented a combined declaration system of husband and wife's wage income tax separately, that is, husband and wife's wage income can be taxed separately, and other income still needs to be taxed collectively. Item 3 of Article 15 of the Income Tax Law of Taiwan Province Province stipulates that "regardless of the property system adopted by husband and wife, their income shall be consolidated and declared according to law." At the beginning of the implementation of the combined declaration system, the income tax law requires that all the income of both husband and wife should be declared and taxed together. However, in tax practice, it is gradually found that joint declaration will produce a higher progressive tax rate, which will change the tax burden level of husband and wife after consolidated tax payment, and then affect the neutrality of marriage. Therefore, the authorities of Taiwan Province Province revised the income tax law and decided to adopt a combined declaration system in which husband and wife pay taxes separately. The combined declaration system of husband and wife's wage income paying taxes separately not only has the advantage of combining tax payment with the family as the tax unit, but also can reduce the progressive tax burden of husband and wife's wages to a certain extent and minimize the degree of intervention in marriage.

2.2 Establish a comprehensive information platform and strengthen cooperation and exchanges with relevant departments.

At present, China still lacks an information platform that can effectively synthesize taxpayer's family-related information, and also lacks cooperation and information sharing with financial institutions, banks and other relevant departments. It has been confirmed that in order to provide the necessary technical support for the family joint tax collection and management model, with the vigorous promotion of the national * * * departments, the personal information networking of the national local tax system was fully launched in 20 12. In addition, since 1994, China's golden tax project has made great achievements through the first, second and third phases of golden tax construction. The overall goal of the third phase of Golden Tax Project is "one platform, two levels of processing, three coverage and four types of systems", and finally a modern tax management information system with mutual information sharing and wide coverage will be built. This modern tax management system can communicate the information between the tax department and other related departments by establishing a unified network platform, thus promoting the information exchange and cooperation between departments. In this information-sharing management environment, the tax authorities can fully grasp the basic situation of taxpayers and keep abreast of the changes of taxpayers' family situation, which is conducive to tax design, strengthen tax source monitoring and simplify tax collection and management.

2.3 Simplify the concept of family and introduce the family coefficient system.

Family is a broad concept, and how to clearly define the scope of family in tax collection and management is a difficult problem. For example, the "family" in family joint tax payment refers to the two-generation family of a couple and their children or the multi-generation family of a couple and their children. The unclear definition of family scope makes it more difficult and complicated to collect personal income tax by family. China Family Development Report 20 14 shows that there are about 430 million families in China at present, with an average family size of 3.02 people. Compared with the data of previous years, we can see that the family size in China is getting smaller and smaller, which provides good conditions for us to choose families as tax paying units. Under this trend, the tax authorities can choose the nuclear family as the basic tax payment unit, that is, the marriage relationship is used as the family division standard instead of cohabitation. In this way, the tax authorities take the nuclear family as the fundamental starting point when formulating the tax rate, and can adopt the split method for two couples' families or families with large population in it runs in the family. While simplifying the concept of family, China can also introduce the French family coefficient system, that is, set a reasonable coefficient value for each member of the family, and then use the family coefficient to remove the income that the family jointly declares and pays taxes to get taxable income.

2.4 the establishment of a mixed tax model

The mixed income tax system, also known as the classified comprehensive income tax system, as its name implies, refers to the classification and itemization of part of taxpayers' income and the total taxation of the rest. The mixed income tax system has the advantages of classified income tax system and comprehensive income tax system, and will be respected and adopted by more countries in the future. At present, China's classified income tax model has the advantages of being cheap to both parties, but there are also many disadvantages, mainly reflected in the expense deduction of personal income tax. Allowing taxpayers with more taxable categories to deduct more expenses is difficult to accurately reflect the taxpayer's actual comprehensive negative tax paying ability and does not conform to the principle of affordability. Although the comprehensive income tax system can best reflect the overall negative tax paying ability of taxpayers, its management cost is high and difficult. Therefore, combined with the current national conditions, China can learn from the advanced system and experience of Japanese individual income tax, adopt a comprehensive levy on most of taxpayers' income, and implement a separate tax on special project income, such as capital gains. In the aspect of expense deduction, the necessary expenses are deducted from the income obtained, and the livelihood is deducted according to the family burden. This pre-tax deduction mechanism not only fully considers the necessary cost of taxpayers to obtain taxable income, but also considers the difference of living burden of different families, which is in line with the principle of tax affordability and tax fairness.

3 Conclusion

The combined declaration system of husband and wife's salary and income, which pays taxes separately by the family, not only has the advantages of family paying taxes together, but also has a good marriage neutrality. Theoretically speaking, it is in line with China's current actual national conditions; Emotionally speaking, it is also conducive to promoting social equity and building a harmonious society; In terms of operation, it is undeniable that there are still insurmountable technical obstacles, but it cannot be used as an excuse to avoid them repeatedly. Under the current national conditions, China does not have the necessary technical conditions to implement the system of separate taxation and consolidated declaration of husband and wife's wage income, but this cannot be the reason for us to stop. The ultimate goal of individual tax reform is to make it play a better role in adjusting income distribution and narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, that is, to achieve the goal of "the rich pay more taxes and the poor pay less taxes" without affecting the neutrality of marriage, and the combined declaration system of separate taxation of husband and wife's salary income can just meet this idea. Therefore, we should take the initiative to create conditions, conform to public opinion, and make the combined declaration system of husband and wife's wages and salaries paid separately by the family as the tax unit be implemented as soon as possible, which will become the well-being of the people.

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Fan: Discussion on the Problems and Countermeasures of Individual Income Tax System

Personal income tax is a kind of income tax levied on the personal income of Chinese people, individuals living in China and income obtained by overseas individuals from China. Personal income tax accounts for a large proportion of China's current fiscal revenue. After many adjustments, China's personal income tax system adopts the classification system.

1 personal income tax system model and problems in the implementation process

1. 1 individual income tax model

The reason is partly because the current personal income tax system still has obvious defects, and partly because of the psychological imbalance of the people caused by the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

1.2 The provisions on expense deduction in the existing tax system are unscientific.

At present, China's personal income tax payment system is applicable to the whole country, and the exemption amount of residents' income tax is completely unified. Although this provision ensures the fairness and justice of residents' payment to a certain extent, it actually does not take into account the actual situation of taxpayers and the differences in consumption levels between different regions. Without considering the taxpayer's family situation and actual affordability, such as supporting the elderly, raising children, mortgage and many other factors.

1.3 It is unreasonable for the existing tax system to realize the classified collection mode.

In the actual collection process, it is difficult to distinguish between wages and salaries and labor remuneration income, and there may be the phenomenon that the income is the same but the tax amount is different. For example, Wang is a designer of an enterprise, with a monthly salary of 8,000 yuan and personal income tax of 8,000-3,500×10%-105 = 345 yuan. While Li is engaged in design salary, with a monthly labor remuneration of 8,000 yuan and personal income tax of [8,000 *1-20%] × 20% =1280 yuan. The difference in personal income tax paid by the two people is 935 yuan. Labor income in the same month, however, due to the different ways of collecting wages, salary income and labor remuneration income in China's expense deduction system, Li Duo paid a tax of 935 yuan.

1.4 The existing tax system cannot fully implement the legislative principles.

An important principle followed by China's individual income tax is to alleviate the income gap. However, from the actual situation, the gap between the rich and the poor in China has been increasing in recent years, and the current tax system has been unable to comprehensively measure the taxpayer's ability to pay taxes. On the contrary, it has caused the phenomenon that the tax burden of people with more comprehensive income is heavier, while the tax burden of people with lower average economic sources but relatively concentrated income is heavier. In addition, the current tax system has brought difficulties to tax administration to a certain extent.

The tax system of 1.5 is unfair.

The unfairness of tax payment is mainly reflected among taxpayers. According to the existing regulations, the collection methods of individual income tax can be divided into monthly collection and annual collection. The main taxable items collected annually include individual industrial and commercial households, enterprises and institutions, certain industries and wage sources. Such a tax system will, to a certain extent, cause tax differences between employees or individual operators in certain industries and ordinary enterprises. Secondly, although the tax authorities have unified regulations on enterprise projects that should pay taxes, there are great differences in the actual operation of taxation.

2. Countermeasures to improve China's individual income tax system

2. 1 Reform the tax pattern

Integrate the comprehensive tax system and the classified tax system, apply them uniformly, and realize the reasonable collection of different taxes. In the current stage of economic transformation, the personal income tax system will be constantly adjusted with the economic development. The application of the mixed tax system of comprehensive tax and classified tax can largely prevent tax evasion and unreasonable taxation. Realize the harmony and unity of tax management level and tax environment.

2.2 Reasonable formulation of expense deduction standards

The deduction standard cannot be evaluated only according to the salary level and the nature of funds. As we all know, China has a vast territory and a large population, so the development level of different regions and the living burden of different families are different. In addition to the unified exemption amount, other relief policies also need rigorous and systematic analysis.

2.3 Improve individual income tax from classification system to comprehensive system.

First of all, it is necessary to use different tax rates for classified tax deduction in advance for taxpayers' itemized income. After the end of the tax year, the taxpayer shall declare the comprehensive income tax for the whole year in a consolidated way, and at the same time, the tax payable for the current year shall be settled by overpaying and underpaying.

2.4 Enhance citizens' awareness of tax payment

Improve and publicize tax-related laws and regulations, strengthen tax law publicity, let every citizen know and abide by the law, and enhance the consciousness of paying taxes according to law.

2.5 improve the level of tax collection and management

First of all, with the help of advanced modern electronic science and technology, through cooperation with banks, we can establish a perfect information management system, realize nationwide resource sharing, and avoid the negative impact of information errors on tax management. The information management system needs to monitor and verify the source and amount of personal income in detail, in addition, it also needs to register and verify the real estate and working capital held by individuals regularly to realize the property supervision of taxpayers.