The Beijing government has launched investigations of more than 100 film and music stars and private entrepreneurs to see if they are paying enough tax. The 21st Century Business Herald yesterday reported that the tax bureau of Beijing's Haidian district had collected 1.9 billion yuan (HK$1.8 billion) in personal income tax last year, a sharp increase from the 30 million in 1994 but still far below what it should be. Haidian is one of the richest areas in China, as it includes China Central Television and Beijing Television, the country's top two universities, several film and recording studios and many hi-tech companies. An estimated 100,000 people with an annual income of more than 10,000 yuan, of whom about 100 earn more than US$1 million (HK$7.8 million) a year, live in the area. However, its tax bureau has just 300 collectors for 60,000 firms To make amends, the bureau selected 108 people for investigation, including television stars like Zhao Zhongxiang, Ni Ping and Peng Liyuan, private businessmen and district political leaders. In June last year, the National Tax Bureau ordered its collectors to go after high-income individuals. Its publication, China Tax, reported that of the 50 richest people in China named by Forbes magazine last year, only four had paid personal income tax. At a meeting with 12 economists last month in the Zhongnanhai government compound, Premier Zhu Rongji complained about the non-payment and said it was abnormal. Official figures show less than 20 per cent of depositors own 80 per cent of the more than seven trillion yuan held in individual bank accounts, but pay less than 10 per cent of the income tax collected by the government. Following the bureau's order, collectors launched 20,000 investigations into payments of personal income tax, which brought in an additional 300 million yuan - a third of it from Beijing. Yang Chunping, deputy director of the Beijing Tax Bureau, said the rich used three main ways to evade tax. The first was to list their income as a company expense and take their personal spending from the company, the second was to make transactions only in cash, which leave no records, and the third was to have multiple bank accounts, making it almost impossible to trace their income. Hu Angang, a professor at Tsinghua University, said farmers, China's poorest people, paid the highest proportion of their income in taxes and fees, while the richest paid little or none.