Jeff Byrne

NOTHING is more sure in life than death and taxes. I don’t know who said this but it is certainly true. Any reasonable person understands that taxes are inevitable although there are some who do not. Greek citizens, to a large extent, refuse to pay taxes, which is one of the reasons Greece is suffering today.

Most of the wealthy in Western countries try to avoid paying taxes. That’s for the “little people” whose taxes are taken from their pay packets by employers who pass the money on to the government, so there is no escape.

Governments need money to provide the infrastructure to make a city run smoothly. And we all use a city’s infrastructure, which is mostly paid for by taxes.

Many countries have retirement and insurance schemes with contributions being paid by employers and employees so people have a retirement fund when they retire. This reduces the strain on government coffers that provide state pensions.

In September last year, China announced new regulations that would implement a social security program for expatriates working in the country but there are scant details. What we do know is that employees will be required to pay up to 11 percent of salaries up to 11,688 yuan and employers up to a staggering 37 percent of an employee’s monthly salary into what has been described as “a basket of social security funds.”

What many people don’t seem to understand is that these are not annual rates. They apply monthly.

It is supposed to provide retirement funds for foreign workers who retire in China.

But, have the proponents of this insidious scheme conducted any research to determine how many expatriates will retire in China?

It would seem that little thought and even less research has gone into this scheme for it to benefit foreign employees. According to what little we know, expatriate employees would be entitled to have their contributions refunded when they leave the country. But, just try getting a refund from a bureaucracy which knows you are about to leave the country. Without a work permit or other relevant visa, foreigners cannot stay here, let alone retire.

Beijing seems to be the only city to have started registering foreign companies and employees by Oct. 15 although it emerged later that the cities of Suzhou and Tianjin had started preparing a register. Some said the new regulations had caught them off guard.

This will be a massive burden on foreign companies and there is a need for this to be reconsidered.

If the bureaucracy believes this is a fair deal for foreign businesses, it needs to have another look, conduct some serious research and reshuffle the cards because it is now dealing from the bottom of the deck.

(The author is a former Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)