A year has passed since the first implementation of a tax policy that requires people who make more than 120,000 yuan, or16, 000 US dollars annually to pay individual tax voluntarily. However, many high-income earners dodged the tax last year, arguing that they forgot to pay or had not cultivated the sense of voluntarily paying the tax.

People's Daily said that people have been evading paying taxes mostly because they were unable to understand the benefits of paying taxes for public education, healthcare, care for the aged and the unemployed.

Meanwhile, the paper also stressed that paying tax is not simply a question of whether people have the will to do it. It is related to the question of whether the government can reward those taxpayers through financial policies and protect their interests.

It suggested that the individual income tax model should take into account taxpayers' burdens as well as their personal responsibility. The tax system should advance with the times and adopt a people-oriented approach to set appropriate tax ratios.