Modern-day skyscrapers attract professionals and contribute substantially to Futian district revenues. Provided to China Daily

More than 60% of the district's taxes come from 50 large buildings

The office buildings rising up high above the Futian district of the southern border city of Shenzhen are more than just a bit of decoration to improve the city's skyline; they are also helping improve the service economy a lot.

And they are doing that by contributing a large chunk of the city's taxes.

One standout is the China Merchants Bank Tower, home of China's sixth largest lender. That single office building took the district prize in tax payments last year, with nearly 6.5 billion yuan.

Compared to 2008, 16 more business buildings joined the rank of big building taxpayers - each paid more than 100 million yuan ($15.45 million) in taxes to the central and local governments - enabling the total number of the buildings to reach 50 in the area in 2010, according to district government figures.

Seven out of the buildings paid at least 1 billion yuan in taxes each.

Those 50 buildings accounted for 60.5 percent of total taxes collected from the district, an increase of 58.2 percent from 2008.

There were also 33 buildings that passed the 100-million-yuan mark in both 2009 and 2010, with 2009 showing a 23.3-percent rise from 2008.

With the development of new skyscrapers in the coming years, the government of Futian district said they can comfortably forecast that tax contribution from the office buildings would keep growing and the number of the top contributors would rise from 50 to 60 by the end of this year.

According to analysts, this new way of figuring tax payments, per individual office building may more realistically reflect the situation in a district that is dedicated to corporate headquarters and modern services.

It indicates that more than half of the taxes paid by its top 50 office buildings - 17.1 billion yuan - come from business income tax, followed by sales tax, which stood at nearly 5 billion yuan.

Personal income tax came in third at roughly 4.9 billion yuan, or 15.72 percent. That was higher than value-added taxes, which amounted to around 3.1 billion yuan.

These figures obviously reflect strong performance of these corporate headquarters in general and modern service in particular, where the business is spreading outward, the analysts said.

In fact, a majority of the companies in these buildings are in the service industry - finance, retail and wholesale, information, computer services and software, real estate, and leasing, with finance play a leading role.

According to the district government, the top three taxpayers are the China Merchants Bank, CITIC Securities, and Ping'an Life Insurance, all in finance.

Finance, information services, computer services, and software, it appears, can be paying a bigger amount of tax with fewer companies.

In comparison, the leasing and commercial services paid the fifth largest amount of taxes, but also accounted for the largest number of companies by category.

Companies in this area are small to medium-size and have room to grow, the local government has explained.

These high-rises are also a gathering place for professionals and talented people; one example of that being the China Merchants Bank Tower.

About 56 percent of its people have a university education, and 27.5 percent have a master's degree. Their average income last year was 173,100 yuan.