The Chinese government has announced a new pre-tax deduction policy for enterprises that make donations in the area of poverty alleviation. This appears to be in line with the government’s official promotion of “targeted poverty alleviation” and its stated goal of eliminating poverty entirely by 2020.
The announcement N0. 49, published on the 2nd of April by the Ministry of Finance, the State Taxation Administration and the State Council Leading Group Office for Poverty Alleviation and Development, proclaims that donations enterprises make for poverty alleviation can be deducted from their taxable income between January 1st, 2019 and December 31st, 2022, on the condition that the donations are for targeted areas and donated through charitable social organizations, or People’s governments at or above the county level and their constituent departments and directly affiliated institutions.
If an enterprise has made donations for poverty alleviation and other charitable donations at the same time, when calculating the annual limit on tax deductions for charitable donation expenditures, the poverty alleviation donations can be excluded. The policy is also valid for enterprises which made poverty alleviation donations but didn’t deduct them from their taxable income between 2015 and 2018.
