(Yicai) Aug. 8 -- More robust collection practices helped China’s property tax receipts jump 12 percent to CNY261.8 billion (USD36.5 billion) in the first half from a year ago despite a weak housing market, providing an important revenue cushion for cash-strapped local authorities.

Multiple provincial-level regions reported double-digit growth in receipts from tax levied on real estate holdings in the six months ended June 30, with the last figures coming out on Aug. 5. Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region logged a near 18 percent jump to CNY4.1 billion (USD571 million), Jilin province a 16 percent increase to CNY9.7 billion, and Fujian province an almost 14 percent gain to CNY7.4 billion.

Some localities have made their tax collection more efficient by using advanced methods such as Big Data cross-matching. The tax bureau of Zhengzhou Airport Economy Zone, for instance, used digital management techniques to gather and compare property and land tax data across the board.

This way it collected CNY2.6 billion in the first half, a 36 percent jump, and recovered back taxes worth CNY231 million through online data matching combined with offline risk checks.

Introduced in 1986, China’s property tax is levied based on property value or rental income and collected from owners or operators at a set percentage. Except for the cities of Chongqing and Shanghai, owner-occupied homes are not subject to the tax.

The tax is levied locally and its revenues belong to local governments, which are under heavy budgetary pressure because revenue growth has slowed as a result of a slower economy, soft property market, and tax cuts, while fixed costs such as social welfare and debt servicing have not fallen.

The increase in property tax revenue will, to some extent, ease the fiscal revenue-and-expenditure bind for local governments, according to analysts.

Editor: Tom Litting