Tax, Accounting and Audit in China 2015 - Preview Tax, Accounting & Audit in China 2015 - Preview | Page 9

1.1 A Brief History
China’s tax system was practically in chaos when the People’s Republic of China was first
established in 1949. The Government Administration Council, now the State Council, promulgated
the Implementation Standards of National Tax Policies in 1950, which unified the tax rules applied
nationwide and laid the basic legal framework for taxation in China; several revisions and
improvements were made in the following decades. Rather than a tool to adjust the economy,
China’s tax system from the 1950s to 1970s was designed solely for the purpose of collecting capital.
In 1978, two years after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong and the end of the Cultural Revolution
(1966-1976), the state government led