China Personal Income Tax — 7 Special Additional Deduction Simulator + Year-End Reconciliation (2024 policy)

Real-world use cases

• Estimate your March–June reconciliation refund before opening the official app

  Annual filing season runs March 1 to June 30. Before you open the 个人所得税 APP, plug last year's gross comprehensive income, the deductions you actually used, and the pre-withholding total from your January payslip (year-to-date column). The simulator gives you a rough refund or pay-back number in 30 seconds. If it says ¥4,200 refund and the APP later shows ¥4,180, you know your inputs are sane. If the APP shows ¥0 and the simulator said ¥4,200, you forgot to declare a deduction to HR last year — the APP lets you add it on the spot.

• Decide whether to claim infant care + children's education together

  You have a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old in primary school. Some families miss that these stack — they file only the ¥2,000 children's education line and skip the ¥2,000 infant care line, leaving ¥24,000/year on the table. Toggle both fields in the simulator and watch the annual tax drop by ¥2,400 to ¥7,200 depending on your bracket. That is real money you would otherwise hand back to the tax bureau by oversight.

• Compare elderly-support split with a sibling

  You and your sister both support your 65-year-old mother. The non-only-child cap is ¥1,500 per child, splitting the ¥3,000 total. The simulator lets you set the elderly line to ¥1,500 (split) versus ¥3,000 (only child) so you can immediately see what you would lose if a sibling appears on the household register that you forgot. Useful when a half-sibling or adopted-back sibling situation surfaces during the filing year.

• Pick rent vs mortgage when both look possible

  You rent ¥6,000/mo in Shanghai and you co-own a mortgage on a small apartment in your hometown that your parents live in. The policy says one or the other. The simulator lets you flip between "rent ¥1,500" and "mortgage ¥1,000" and see which saves more. For most filers in tier-1 cities the rent line wins by ¥1,800/year of tax; for tier-2 the mortgage line is even.

• Sanity-check a freelancer's deduction stack

  You earn ¥220,000 of labor-service income as a freelance writer with no employer. There is no withholding agent adding deductions on your behalf — every deduction must be claimed at year-end reconciliation. Load the "freelancer" preset, fill in the deductions you actually have (parents support + rent + continuing education for your CPA prep), and compare the simulator's annual tax to the 20%/40% pre-withholding that the platforms deducted. The gap is your refund — typically ¥8,000 to ¥20,000 for a mid-six-figure income freelancer.

Common pitfalls

• Forgetting the 2023 doubling. Children's education is ¥2,000/mo (not ¥1,000), infant care under 3 is ¥2,000/mo (not ¥1,000 and not zero), elderly support only-child cap is ¥3,000 (not ¥2,000). If you still file with the old numbers you under-report deductions and over-pay tax.

• Claiming both housing rent and mortgage interest in the same tax year. Policy says one or the other for the household. The 个税 APP will reject the second one but if you toggle mid-year you may end up with neither correctly attributed to the right months — recheck "扣除起止月份" in the APP before submitting.

• Treating "serious illness medical" as a monthly deduction. It is year-end only, against actual self-paid receipts above ¥15,000, capped at ¥80,000. There is no monthly pre-withholding version, and you must keep the social-insurance settlement slips for at least 5 years for audit.

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