Speaking at a press conference in Beijing Tuesday, Jin Renqing, director of the State Taxation Bureau, said efforts to tackle tax evasion would continue in 2003.

According to Jin, China's taxation authority will enforce investigations into tax cases and broaden the scope of tax supervision in 2003, focusing on some of the most important cases and those in key industries, areas and tax categories.

Jin said taxation supervision over companies in China would be strengthened in 2003.

Calling it a responsibility of taxation departments, Jin said the decision to supervise the taxes of an enterprise was made after weighing up all abnormal tax phenomena collected on the enterprise.

All companies were equal under the law, no matter whether domestic or overseas, and taxation supervision was never targeted at one specific enterprise, said Jin.

Referring to tax cases concerning some famous people dealt within 2002, Jin said though there was no specific plan to target celebrities in 2003, firm steps would be taken if any hint of tax evasion was found among them.

Cui Junhui, deputy director of the State Taxation Bureau, said as well as investigating and supervising tax cases, the sector itself would strengthen its internal operation and speed up the building of a taxation information system in 2003, so that taxation departments could gather timely tax data on all taxpayers.

(Xinhua News Agency January 15, 2003)