The Golden Tax Project, value-added tax statistics, and the analysis of internal trade in China

Weibo Xing () and John Whalley

China Economic Review, 2014, vol. 30, issue C, 448-458

Abstract: This paper utilizes a previously unavailable database on the commodity transactions of firms to analyze internal trade in China. This database is built from value-added tax (VAT) invoices collected under a comprehensive management information system, the Golden Tax Project (GTP). This project was established in 1994 to monitor and administer VAT collection and has been improved over the subsequent years. We present the structure, function, and evolution of the GTP, which provides reliable information on transaction values across provinces. We have access only to part of the GTP data set relevant to internal trade. The data suggests that internal trade in China has grown quickly but with seasonal fluctuations. Although the interprovincial trade in China is smaller than the interstate trade in United States and the intra-European Union trade, the high growth rate of the interprovincial trade suggests that economic connections among the provinces are strengthening. The positive relationship between internal trade and international trade in most regressions suggests the possible complementarity between these two types of trade.

Keywords: Value-added tax; Tax administration; Internal trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H26 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X14000431
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:30:y:2014:i:c:p:448-458

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2014.05.005

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().