1. What the World Bank's Business Ready (B-READY) mainly assesses:

• Supervisory framework: Efforts to undertake appraisals of the quality of taxation-related laws and the implementation of environmental taxation.
• Public services: Digitalization of taxation management, taxation inspection, dispute-settlement mechanisms, and the administration level of taxation agencies.
• Convenience: Taxation time and burdens relating to income tax, social security and value-added tax

2. Key points, cases, and relevant legal policies (Coming soon)

3. What efforts have been made in Shanghai:

• The issuance of the Management Measures for Advance Tax Rulings of the Shanghai Municipal Tax Service (Trial) pioneers the establishment of a system for advance tax rulings, effectively enhancing tax law certainty for taxpayers, and reducing tax-related risks for enterprises.
• The revised Administrative Measures for the Formulation of Tax Regulatory Documents in Shanghai clarifies that the drafting of tax normative documents should fully consider various opinions, further enhancing the transparency of tax regulation changes.
• To continuously alleviate burdens and enhance capabilities for small and medium-sized economic entities, the "six taxes and two fees" reduction policy for small and micro enterprises will be extended until the end of 2027.
• Thanks to tax big data, the tax and fee policies are intelligently tailored to businesses based on industry, company type, and personnel details. This ensures eligible enterprises promptly receive policies that meet their needs, delivering tax incentives directly and efficiently.
• Continuously advancing the intelligence level of tax and fee processing, Shanghai achieves a 98 percent online processing rate for tax matters and a 99 percent online filing rate. With an almost 90 percent recognition rate for intelligent queries, the service ratio leads the national tax system.
• The electronic tax bureau's confirmation-based filing simplifies the process with automated data extraction, tax calculations, and form generation. Taxpayers can confirm filings through the system, enabling a simplified confirmation-based filing for multiple taxes in one go, reducing both filing and tax payment time.
• Small low-profit enterprises enjoy automatic eligibility for tax incentives. During tax filing, the system automatically identifies, calculates, and fills in relevant information based on taxpayers' basic details, enhancing the policy convenience.
• Promotes the use of digital RMB for social security fees of urban and rural residents and flexible workers, introduces innovative tax payment methods via overseas remittances, and launch of the "blockchain + cross-border electronic taxation for non-resident enterprises" function to meet the diverse needs of taxpayers and fee payers.
• An innovative tax service model combining inquiries with remote assistance is carried out. The model is endorsed by the State Taxation Administration and replicated nationwide. A unified tax interaction service has been introduced, facilitating a targeted push, intelligent interaction, collaborative inquiry, and full-process interaction.
• Introduced the nation's first intelligent English voice consultation system in the tax sector, providing efficient tax advisory services for cross-border taxpayers.
• The city has established over 70 taxation convenient points, with 47 big ones. Located in industrial parks, buildings, banks, and streets, they form a "15-minute tax service circle", ensuring efficient services for taxpayers and fee payers.
• Advancing the "certificate reduction" convenience initiative, a commitment mechanism has been introduced for 12 tax certification matters. This aims to minimize upfront certification requirements while bolstering subsequent monitoring efforts to mitigate tax-related risks effectively.
• With the implementation of a comprehensive "credit + risk" tax supervision system, classification, and grading have been applied to 138 items, including new business packages, comprehensive reporting, real-time collection and refunds, and simplified penalties. This initiative notably reduces paperwork, steps, and time in tax processes, easing burdens for taxpayers, fee payers, and grassroots tax officials.
• The acceleration of audit informatization, bolstered by the "smart audit" system, has strengthened the utilization of tax big data and external data analysis, significantly improving audit precision and efficiency.
• To better protect the lawful rights of taxpayers, Shanghai has further improved its taxation and fee-related dispute settlement mechanisms and set up special venues in 26 taxation service centers for enterprises to express their dissatisfaction with public services and seek settlement of their problems.

4. What Shanghai has achieved:

• Shanghai's taxation frequency and time ranked 16th and 47th respectively in the World Bank's Doing Business 2020 study.
• The 2020 China's Business Environment Report states that Shanghai ranks third nationwide in the taxation index. Notably, it received the highest score possible for tax payment times, making it the top performer across the country.