Lawyer launches lawsuit against developers over land tax issue

Source:Global Times Published: 2014-1-5 23:38:02

Another lawyer has joined an ongoing fight against China Vanke Co, the country's largest property developer by market value, which has recently faced a lot of criticism over allegedly not paying land appreciation tax (LAT), according to a report aired Sunday by China National Radio (CNR).

Liu Yajun, a lawyer with Beijing-based Changge Law Offices, has sent an indictment to a local court in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province on Thursday, requesting the court to order Vanke to publicly reveal the amount of LAT that it has allegedly not paid for its 162 finished projects which met LAT payment criteria before the end of 2012.

Whether the court will accept the lawsuit will be known later this week, the report said.

Liu also holds stakes in Vanke and claimed the company's unpaid LAT may have an impact on the investments of people holding Vanke's shares, according to the report. The value of Vanke's stock held by Liu was not disclosed.

Liu's lawsuit renews an ongoing battle against some of the country's top home sellers, who have reaped decent profits from a real estate boom in recent years but have been recently questioned for an alleged tax wrongdoing. 

On Saturday, Vanke announced its contract sales for December stood at 10.95 billion yuan ($1.81 billion), bringing the contract sales for the whole of 2013 to 170.94 billion yuan, an increase of 21 percent from a year earlier, as a reflection of busy sales in the property market.

The sales disclosure came a few days after State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said in a  report on December 30 that Vanke failed to pay LAT of more than 4 billion yuan by the end of 2012.

The State broadcaster had earlier aired a report in November alleging that 45 major listed real estate companies had failed to pay 3.8 trillion yuan in LAT between 2005 and 2012, citing calculations by Li Jinsong, a Beijing-based lawyer and certified tax agent.

Vanke reportedly owed the third-highest amount with unpaid LAT totaling 5.8 billion yuan by 2012, according to the list of 45 property developers.

Vanke has insisted that such accusations indicate merely a lack of general knowledge of accounting and tax.

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