During his first year in office, President Xi Jinping put fiscal reform back on top of China's policy agenda. The Party Politburo followed the president's lead in June, promising to finish major fiscal and tax reform tasks by 2016 and establish a modern fiscal system by 2020.1 Among the proposals is the elimination of a tax that discriminates against services companies, adding a recurring tax on property, and imposing a price-based tax on coal, along with measures to improve budget management. China last overhauled its tax-and-spend system in 1994, when the country's economy was much smaller...