Unified income tax rates in sight

In a bid to speed up China's tax reform, foreign-funded companies will be subject to the same corporate income tax rate as their Chinese counterparts starting 2007, ending a two-decade preferential tax policy that has resulted in annual tax breaks of approximately US$50bn to foreign companies, state media reported, citing Jia Kang, president of the Institute of Fiscal Science under the Ministry of Finance. Jia did not say what the unified rate would be, though analysts expect it to be around 24-25%.