By Hu Peng
　  Kunshan Daily
　  The most eye-catching tax reform to replace Business Tax with Value Added Tax (VAT) officially went into force starting from Oct. 1 in Jiangsu province. By Nov. 15, or during the first tax declaration period, Kunshan had seen over 3,000 pilot companies turn out a total of RMB27 million yuan in VAT and save as much as RMB10 million yuan from tax reduction.
　  Since the tax pilot program was initiated on Oct. 1 in Kunshan, the city's various departments such as financial, national tax, local tax, etc. worked closely together to push forward the reform steadily. Before that, Kunshan natioal tax authorities conducted a two-month field survey and found 3,555 pilot tax payers entitled for the new tax policy.
　  In order to guarantee smooth operation of the first declaration after the reform was implemented, which is totally new to pilot taxpayers, the national tax authorities spared no effort to guide the tax declaration process. Among others, they set up 48 special service windows across the city as well as two service spots, organized eight information service teams, launched information hotline and email-box, etc. Up until now, they have accumulatively helped with more than 2300 tax declaration cases.
　  During the next period, the national tax department will shift their focus of effort to how to provide pilot taxpayers with follow-up service and help pilot companies get adapted to the national tax collection and management environment within a short time.