Distribution dynamics of China’s regional housing price disparity

Capital Accumulation, Private Property, and Rising Inequality in China, 1978–2015

“…Finally, note also that the top decile household income shares reported byPiketty and Qian (2009) for China over the 1986-2003 period do not control at all for household size, which explains why they are significantly higher (2-3 points) than the (uncorrected) top decile household income shares reported here (which are based upon per adult income) 15. See alsoXu and Yue (2013), who combine urban household surveys, tax legislation, and aggregate tax revenues to simulate the redistributive impact of China's income tax 16. Per the circular, taxable income is defined the sum of wage income, business income, and taxable capital income, minus deductions (which can be estimated to represent on average about 20 percent of pre-deduction fiscal income, so that the taxable income threshold of 120,000 yuans corresponds to a fiscal income threshold of about 150,000 yuans).…”

“…15 In 2006, the Chinese tax administration issued a circular requiring all taxpayers with individual taxable income above 120,000 yuans to file a special declaration, and it started to release the number of such taxpayers and their taxable incomes. 16 These new statistics on high earners were released annually at the national level from 2006 to 2010, but the publication was interrupted in 2011. The circular, however, still applies today, and for income years 2011 to 2015 publication of the data continued at the provincial level (sometime with additional information on taxpayers with incomes above 500,000 and 1 million yuans).…”