The State Taxation Administration issues nationally unified tax administrative penalty discretion benchmarks.

Recently, the State Taxation Administration issued an announcement, releasing the "National Tax Administrative Penalty Discretionary Benchmarks," which will take effect on November 1, 2026, marking the achievement of nationwide unification of tax administrative penalty discretionary benchmarks. A relevant official from the Policy and Legal Affairs Department of the State Taxation Administration introduced that tax authorities have continuously advanced the work of standardizing the discretion of tax administrative penalties, following a model of "provincial unification" to "regional unification" and then to "national unification," and have progressively formulated corresponding tax administrative penalty discretionary benchmarks. In early 2025, the tax bureaus of relevant provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government, and cities under separate state planning in the Northeast, Southwest, Northwest, Central South, North China, and East China regions successively jointly released regional tax administrative penalty discretionary benchmarks. On the basis of fully absorbing the practical results of each region, the State Taxation Administration this time comprehensively optimized the discretionary levels, applicable conditions, and specific standards for 9 categories and 66 items of tax administrative penalty matters, promoting a more reasonable division of tax violation matters, a more scientific setting of discretionary factors, and a more precise grasp of discretionary scales, which is conducive to unifying tax law enforcement standards, standardizing tax law enforcement conduct, and improving the certainty of tax law enforcement.