(Yicai Global) July 27 -- China’s State Taxation Administration has denied that it has issued a new policy to lower taxes in the real estate sector. A recently released document is a summary of previous tax breaks for the property sector, not a new policy, the STA said yesterday.

On July 25, the STA issued guidelines on tax and fee preferential policies, with a total of 19 for the property sector. The document received widespread attention because the market believed it might refer to a new policy to support the sector.

New tax breaks on residential property deals have been awaited by some insiders since the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the country’s top leadership body, recently proposed adjusting and optimizing real estate-related policies to boost the market.

The document’s content is not new, The Paper reported Yan Yuejin, head of the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, as saying. It sorts, summarizes, and restates previous preferential policies, so as to better signal the direction of tax policy, Yan added.

China’s tax authorities will update and improve tax breaks in a timely manner and continually strengthen policy advocacy based on the existing policy system, the official in charge of the STA’s tax policy and legislation department said.

The STA’s hotline yesterday clarified which policies for the real estate sector are in force.

These include no income tax to pay on sold main residences occupied by the owner for at least five years, a 5 percent valued added tax on gains from selling non-ordinary residential properties in first-tier cities where the seller lived for two or more years, and no VAT on the income from the sale of individual residences in non-first-tier cities after two or more years of their purchase.

Editor: Futura Costaglione