On December 22, 2011, the State Administration of Taxation and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce ("SAIC") jointly issued the Notice on Strengthening Cooperation to Share Equity Transfer Information, which became effective on January 1, 2012. The notice requires local industry and commerce ("AIC") authorities to provide tax authorities with equity transfer related information of a limited liability company, such as registration number, shareholders' name(s) and amount of capital contribution, after completing its AIC registration. At the same time, tax authorities must provide AIC authorities with (i) tax registration information of an enterprise following a change in equity ownership; and (ii) following receipt of equity transfer registration information from the AIC authorities, relevant collection information including the amount of tax collected from the enterprise. The information exchange for a certain month shall be completed within 15 days after the end of such month starting from January 1, 2012. For equity transfers completed between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011, the deadline for the information exchange is extended to June 30, 2012. For equity transfers completed between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010, the deadline is September 30, 2012.

The full Chinese text of the notice is available here.

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