I finished teaching a semester of general English last month at the Kunming University of Science and Technology.

While the students were great and the Chinese staff very helpful, I feel I should warn any foreign teacher thinking about teaching there about a few issues.

Firstly, I was told three days before the first class that there was no textbook and that I would have to create the entire body of course materials from scratch, as well as submit a detailed syllabus for the semester at a moment's notice.

Secondly, because of the way their accounting department figures income tax witholding, the promised 150 yuan per hour turned out to be 132 yuan per hour.

And finally, the pay process is glacially slow; I taught the last class on December 8 and won't see my final salary payment until March 21(!).

And I didn't find any of this out until I noticed that the first payment (three months after starting the class) to the bank where I had to open an account was not the amount I was expecting.

So only consider teaching there if you're okay with filling out mountains of paperwork, creating a semester course on your own from scratch, waiting three months to get paid for your efforts and receiving almost 20 yuan per hour less for your trouble than what is in the contract.

Getting paid months late - that's unacceptable. No Chinese would accept that kind of laziness.

As for paying taxes - that's normal for every developed country in the world - you're lucky they didn't deduct for healthcare / insurance.

It seems major universities are scrutinizing their accounting practices, which is slowing everything related to accounting offices - such as salaries, reimbursements, authorizations, etc down to a glacial speed.

This is directly and primarily a result of the nationwide crackdown on corruption - although some may have excessively if not abusively overzealous exercised their newfound power, in the quest for compliance.

The issue with the tax wasn't that I somehow thought China didn't have income tax. The issue was that foreigners are supposed to have a 4,800 yuan per month exemption before they start being taxed.

did you get a tax fapio? if not tell the uni you will go the the tax office and ask for one. if they are deducting tax (that isnt really tax) the shit will hit the fan

There a few issues you need to make clear before you can tell if excess tax is being withheld. Are you an employee with an employment contract? If so the 4800 yuan exemption is correct.

If you are working under the personal services rule, say 150 yuan per hour, then the IIT is calculated differently. Effectively, this tax is 20% of income above 4000 yuan EACH PAYMENT. If they pay you three months at one time it is still 20% over 4000 yuan.

Personal services are also subject to

a 5% business tax.

At this point it gets too complicated. I am retired and don't do taxes.

www.ccilc.pt/[...]

Please pardon my ignorance, but what's a tax fapio?

As mentioned above. Paid by the hour was your problem, you'll have different tax rates to those paid by the month.

Also they'll be paying you similarly to how you'd invoice someone, much more paperwork, people involved etc and so with that, much more time needed.

Requesting a ‘tax fapio**’ will likely get you nothing as this is the wrong thing to ask for. Each employee is entitled to a tax receipt, or report. This is an accounting of wages earned, for some period of time, that was properly reported by the employer to the tax bureau. It is produced by the tax bureau if the employer requests it. Some employers routinely request, annually, the tax receipts.

To get a tax receipt, you must request who ever paid you wages and withheld business tax, social insurance or IIT from your pay to get the tax receipt from the tax bureau. This receipt, or report, is scant of detail. Best I recall, it only shows your gross income for the period without indicating taxable income or actual tax withheld. (I have four hard drives totaling 15TB, not connected to my computer, with images of actual tax receipts supported by Excel worksheets documenting gross and net income and tax withheld for several years/employers but I am disinclined to try to find the stuff).

The tax receipt, from the tax bureau, confirms your wages have been reported and assumes the tax withheld was correctly calculated and verified by the tax bureau. Because the tax receipt does not indicate the actual amount of tax calculated, withheld and paid you could still have had taxes over withheld. Tax bureaus vary in actual practice but generally will always make the employer pay up any under withheld tax amounts but may remain silent if the employer over withholds tax.

If the employer is suspected of being dodgy and is unable or unwilling to get you a tax receipt, I would conclude the employer IS dodgy. If the employer over withholds AND the specific tax bureau involved has the practice of retaining over withheld tax, you would never know from the tax receipt. In 2002, I easily demonstrated that my employer was over withholding tax but never got the money back as I was told, “The government already spent it.” As my dodgy employer was on the outs with the local tax bureau, I did confirm my employer did, in fact, remit the lower, and correct, tax. But as the privately owned school ceased to operate, I had no recourse.

** A ‘fapio’ 发票, is an invoice from a vendor which also serves as a receipt in China. In the west, normally we are presented with an invoice which we pay and then we get a receipt which indicates payment has been made. In a cash economy, there is little need for two documents.

The word is fapiao.