CHINA’S southwestern city of Chongqing will impose a property tax on first-time homebuyers who are non-residents with no job or company in the city, State news agency Xinhua reported Friday.

    The new rule, effective from Jan.14, is being brought in response to recent large price fluctuations in Chongqing Municipality as speculators from outside the city flood the market, Xinhua News Agency said.

    Under previous rules, non-residents who didn’t work and owned no companies in Chongqing only needed to pay a property tax for second homes in the city.

    Chongqing Municipality had been spared the major spike in home prices in other major cities in most of 2016, with new-home prices rising only 6.5 percent year on year last November.

    Chongqing and Shanghai have been the only two Chinese cities to enforce a pilot property ownership tax scheme since 2011, raising taxes on those with multiple homes to penalize speculators.

    In Chongqing, the property tax threshold has been 13,192 yuan (US$1,912) per square meter since 2014, the Xinhua news agency said.

    (SD-Agencies)