China's tax authority said Wednesday it has decided to expand its namelist of major sources of tax revenues next year to reduce losses of tax revenues.

Beginning next year, the namelist, which involves 30,287 companies, will be expanded to taxpayers that pay 5 million yuan (US$617,283) in corporate taxes annually and those with 100 million yuan (US$12.3 million) in sales revenues, the State Administration of Taxation in a press released published on its website.

Companies that fall outside the threshold due to such preferential tax treatment as tax rebates will also be put on the list if their scale of business and production is relatively big, it said.

Major sources of tax revenues on the list contributed 298.2 billion yuan (US$36.8 billion) in tax revenues in 2000, about 27.9 percent of the nation's total tax revenues (excluding Custom duties and securities transaction stamp tax), according to the press release.

The ratio was raised to 45.17 percent in 2004 partly due to the expansion of the namelist, while those firms on the list paid 986.5 billion yuan (US$121.7 billion) in taxes.

The administration said a total of 30,287 companies are on the namelist, about 20 times of that in 1999, the administration said.

(Xinhua News Agency December 8, 2005)