China Should Address Growing Income Gap To Boost Consumption: Yicai

China should focus on the growing income gap to expand domestic demand and stabilise economic growth, said Yicai.com in an editorial. The epidemic has exacerbated income divergence as retail sales growth lags, while spending by the wealthy on luxury cars and expensive homes rose against the trend, the newspaper said. It is necessary to reduce the value-added tax of consumer goods paid by low- and middle-income groups and strengthen tax inspections on practitioners of Internet businesses to regulate excessively high incomes, the newspaper said. It is also important to boost credit, financing, and tax support for SMEs to safeguard the employment of lower income groups and guide companies to optimise employee incomes through equity incentives, the newspaper said.