New tax policy regulates cross-border e-commerce

As more people demand overseas goods, many online purchasing agents have taken advantage of the personal postal article tax, ditched the old way of wholesaling and adopted new methods such as repackaging and mailing products separately to seek customs exemption.

Official statistics showed that in 2014, Chinese shoppers' purchases of imported goods online reached 476.3 billion yuan, however, the personal postal articles tax was under 1.3 billion yuan, which means a big loss of tax revenue to State coffers.

As Chinese customers' overseas shopping spree and the cross-border e-commerce craze are spread from cities to the countryside, despite a 7 percent decrease in China's foreign trade in 2015, the growth rate of the cross-border e-commerce increased more than 30 percent.

As a result, the implementation of the new tax system, which will come into effect on April 8, will offer cross-border businesses as well as traditional retailers a more fair competition mechanism.

Although the new policy means that I might have to pay extra taxes for my future cross-border shopping, it is indeed a good thing for the national economy.

At the same time, the policy will also help clean up the country's e-commerce of illegal activities, so that more consumers will believe that online purchases of overseas goods are safe, thus promoting the further sound development of the e-commerce industry.