Recently, the General Office of the State Administration of Taxation ("SAT") has distributed the Circular on Fully Promoting the Electronic Management System for Financial Notes (the "Circular").
According to the Circular, the reform of adopting electronic financial notes will be fully initiated among authorities under the SAT system from January 1, 2018. These authorities will be equipped with and run the electronic management system for financial notes under unified arrangements and be subject to the electronic administration of financial notes in all aspects. As a result, print-only financial notes will be adopted, and those with information thereon handwritten will be discarded. Further, the Circular sets forth provisions on "fully promoting the electronic management system for financial notes" and "sorting out handwritten notes that have not yet been verified and written off". The Circular expressly states that all manual notes already obtained should not be used any longer from January 1, 2018. Those manual financial notes that have been issued but not been verified and written off yet, and unused blank manual notes, such as the Unified Notes for Non-tax Revenues of the Central Government, Clearing Notes for Funds Transferred Between Central Administrative Bodies and Public Institutions and Unified Notes for Donations for Public Benefit Undertakings, should be sorted out and written off under requirements of the Ministry of Finance ("MOF").