Govt mulls ways to narrow income gap (2)

Zheng noted it would be difficult to expand the pilot program nationwide in the short term, partly because it would be very complicated to calculate the exact amount of the levy and assess the value of the properties involved.

Zheng also said that the notice is just a general guideline, and more details need to be released in the future, such as when and how to impose inheritance taxes in China, which would also be helpful to narrow the wealth gap.

The notice revealed that State-owned enterprises (SOEs) will need to pay 5 percentage points more of their capital income, part of which will go toward helping poorer people.

Currently, the SOEs have to pay 5 to 15 percent of their capital income.

But Gan Li, director of the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance under the Chengdu-based Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times that "5 percentage points extra is still too little."

In 2010, Gan's institute published its own Gini coefficient, an index to measure income inequality.

The reading was 0.61, indicating a wider wealth gap than the figure of 0.474 that was recorded in 2012 by the National Bureau of Statistics, and higher than the globally recognized warning level of 0.40.

The People's Daily said in a commentary Wednesday that coordination of different parties' interests will be involved in the reform, which will be "hard and complicated."