After the Opium War,the residents from Western countries living in China increased continuously.Besides military,diplomatic,and missionary population,there were a large number of foreign residents making living in China in the fields of manufacturing,business,free-lance,and so on.Resorting to the extraterritoriality and the protection of the foreign concessions,they refused to pay taxes to the Chinese government.The emphasis of the Chinese campaign for tariff autonomy lay in the power to levy taxes and decide tax rates,but it did not simultaneously solve the problem of levying taxes on foreign enterprises and residents.In 1936,the Nationalist government in Nanjing formally came to levy the income tax and it led to a heated debate on the domestic and foreign residents’equal obligation to pay taxes.Whether or not foreign residents should pay the income tax was related not only to the sources of taxes and rights of taxes,but also to the willingness of the domestic enterprises and residents to pay taxes.The Chinese government,the Chinese society,and the Western countries had fierce controversy and diplomatic negotiation regarding this problem and other related issues such as the sovereignty of taxation and the system of treaty ports.Although the Nationalist government made great efforts,it still could not solve this problem in the arena of tax administration.The fundamental solution was the reconfiguration of the diplomatic and political relationship between China and Western countries.