Chongqing tax bureau puts services online

Yin Dinghan never expected he could complete the purchase of a house in just half an hour.

Since he is planning to move to southwest China's Chongqing from Zhejiang province in the near future, he bought an apartment in Nan'an district. He took a few days off work and came to Chongqing to finish the transactions at the local tax bureau.

"I uploaded my documents, got them approved and made an appointment at the tax bureau's online platform," Yin said. "It saved me a lot of time and work."

Yin's real estate agent, Zhang Qian, said that in the past homebuyers had to come to the local tax offices to submit their documents, wait for a review and fill out forms. If they forgot to bring some documents, they had to come again.

"It was very time-consuming and inefficient."

Now, the local tax bureau has developed an online tax payment system to combine all the procedures. Since it was put into operation on Aug 1, it has been well received by clients. Nearly 90 percent of the businesses in the nine districts of the city proper are using the system, according to the Chongqing Local Tax Bureau.

The average wait time for a client has been reduced from 83 minutes to 15 minutes.

"The office hall used to be as crowded as the railway stations during the Spring Festival and we had to stand," Zhang said. "Now there are plenty of seats here."

Under the guidelines of "internet plus taxation" from the State Administration of Taxation, Chongqing built an online tax system that was launched on April 18, 2016.

It combines local and state taxation services so that taxpayers can do everything on one platform.

Lyu Yan, a tax agent at Chongqing Dajiang Industry Co, used to calculate the tax, fill out the tax forms and go to the office hall. It would take at least one day to make the trip if she was lucky. Now she can finish everything online in just a few minutes.

"The online tax system will calculate the tax for me. In the past, the company needed two tax agents, but now I am the only one and I can do other work as well."

The Chongqing Local Tax Bureau also provides services on mobile phones through its app and QR code.

So far, over 1.2 million people have chosen to use mobile phones to pay taxes this year.

"In our bureau, the internet has become the major working channel for taxpayers," said Shen Yi, director of the electronic taxation management center at the Chongqing bureau.

"Almost 95 percent of the transactions can be done online," he said.