(Yicai Global) Nov. 27 -- China has been improving its taxation environment in recent years, especially tax authorities' ongoing reform that lowers taxes and fees has created a more relaxed tax tableau, and the country has in consequence risen nine places to the 105th slot in their global tax indexes, per a recent report the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers jointly released.

'Paying Taxes' is a detailed interpretation of taxation indexes in the World Bank's flagship 'Doing Business' report and analyzes changes in the impost environment for private companies in 190 economies worldwide over the past 15 years. Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf, ranks top with the world's best taxation terrain, followed by Hong Kong, Qatar, Ireland and Mauritius, according to 'Paying Taxes 2020.'

China is one of the top 10 economies to have improved most in the business environment over the past year, up to 31st from 46th place, and it moved up nine places to the 105th place in the tax registers, according to the World Bank's 'Doing Business 2020.'

China's time to comply -- which is a metric of the period needed for a company to complete filing and payment procedures and hence of their complexity and onerousness -- totaled 138 hours last year, four hours less than last year, per the report, while the total tax and contribution rate was 59.2 percent, down 4.8 percentage points on the year, and the number of payments and post-filing indexes basically remained flat.

China formulated many new policies to reduce taxes and fees last year and made steady efforts to advance the development of the real economy and enhance taxpayers' sense of gain, said Mei Qicheng, managing partner of PwC's China Tax and Business Service, adding many polices such as the newly-issued excess input value-added tax refund system and measures to optimize the electronic tax payment system have elicited plaudits from the World Bank.

The Chinese government unveiled regulations for improving its business environment in October, which means China will take more sweeping actions to reduce taxes and fees, such as easing the burden on companies of social insurance payments, inclusive tax reductions in small and micro firms, deepening value-added tax reform and building intelligent electronic taxation bureaus, Mei noted, saying China is likely to move further up in the rankings in future editions of 'Paying Taxes.'

Editors: Dou Shicong, Ben Armour