Public Feedback—Survey and Public Media Findings

Abstract

It has been nearly 2 years (as of this writing) since the beginning of the pilot local property tax (LPT) in Shanghai and Chongqing. People throughout the country, if not from paying the tax itself, have begun to get at least some sense of this tax from the media. In the course of the pilot, different groups of the general public had different opinions about the tax. To identify the perceptions and attitude of the general public toward the tax, our research group designed two questionnaires. One is designed for urban residents who are purchasers and owners of residential property, and potential payers of the LPT. The other questionnaire is designed for officials who supposedly know more about policy issues than other private citizens and will be in policy making and implementation positions once the LPT is widely adopted. The residents’ questionnaire consists of three parts: initial understanding of the LPT, attitudes toward the LPT pilots in Shanghai and Chongqing, and suggestions for improvement of this tax reform. The officials questionnaire is mainly concerned with officials’ attitudes toward the relationship between the LPT and local governance.