A New Chinese Property Tax Idea Is Helping To Club The Markets Today

UPDATE: This news came out last night, and it ended up clubbing the Chinese market, contributing to today's "risk-off" tone.

EARLIER: The Chinese government is "actively studying an expansion of the experimental property tax program" and could expand it, according to a Xinhua report that cited Jiang Weixin, minister of housing and urban-rural development.

Home prices climbed in 31 of 70 cities in September. Housing sales meanwhile climbed 5.6 percent year-over-year to 4.63 trillion yuan ($735 billion) in the first 10 months of the year.

This was 2.9 percentage points higher than the January-September period.

China has for sometime now tried to curb speculation in the property market. But prices started to rise again after the central bank cut interest rates to stem the slowdown in the Chinese economy.

Jiang said the recent rise in home sales does not "pose a serious problem" but that the "ministry is on high alert if both transaction volume and home prices increase substantially", according to the report.

The report didn't release any details about the experimental property tax itself.

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