Job Discussion Forums

[cj750]

I am currenlty at a University but I work for a Educational Company from another (non-US) country. Because the company is a parent company with a partner school, I have two contracts. The partner school only pays their foreign teachers 6K and charges them for apartment, ele. and water. I receive my apartment free but am required to pay for ele. although I have been here for a while and no one has asked for a payment yet and I am not reminding them.
I am paid more but because the University doesnt want the other Foreign Teachers to know about it (1) I was requested to sign a confidentiality agreement (2) I am paid an "additonal allowance" (3) During the spring holiday I am paid a retainer allowance.
My question is this. I know about the 4000K reduction on the overall taxable ammount but what about the section of payment entittled "allowance". Is this taxable...the University wants to tax all of the ammount of cource because it can keep 2% of taxes collected for the Chinese goverment as payment for the collection services so it will benifit them to tax the whole ammount..but in other places I have not been taxed on "Housing Allowance" which leads me to this question. Any help on this matter or leads in the right direction is appreciated...

[tarzaninchina]

Utilities and housing allowance are BS. Those are expenses. If you have to pay them, then you use your salary after-tax to pay for them. If the school pays for them, that's an expense they can claim. Ditto for housing allowance. In either case, I would outrightly refuse to pay unless they'll pay you that much more.

Airfare is airfare. Kind of like here's a ticket. There's tax on the ticket that the school provides you with. As for monetary allowances, dunno.

I went to the Canadian embassy in beijing and got the guide from S.A.F.E.A. It says that foreigners are required to pay income tax according to Chinese law. According to Chinese law, the field of education is tax exempt! Hence most private schools piggy-backing other businesses onto the school.

If they press you for it, show a big bag of receipts, showing that you have put a lot back into the local economy.

I've gone through the whole bit about taxes here, becoming a non-resident, etc. As long as I teach here in China, I will not be paying taxes. Besdies, once you've got some clout here, put "after-tax" in the contract just to be 100% safe.

[Roger]

I don't think your embassy informed you properly if they claimed techers' salaries are tax-exempt. Why should that be?
I once posted a question to dezshira Consultants in Peking, and they informed me otherwise. Anybody making more than 4000 stands to pay tax. I feel this is not injurious to our position in China!

It is nevertheless true that most of us escape paying taxes. I say, go with the flow. But don't rock the boat by making an unwarranted ruckus about having to pay whateverybody else has to pay too.

I don't even agree that utilities are supposed to be free; why on Earth should they be? Again: NO! We have to pay for what we consume in this country. Whether we consume electric power to run our computer or the water heater in the bathroom, it is consumption that we should pay for with money earned locally. If our employer generously foots all those bills, so much the better.
But don't take too much for granted!
There are Chinese workers that pay a significantly higher tax rate than us on incomes we would never even bother considering!