BEIJING -- Reform and technology have helped ease China's tax compliance burden, reducing the delay in paying taxes by 20 percent in 2016, a report has shown.

The time for taxpayers to comply fell to 207 hours last year from 259 hours in 2015, a 75-percent reduction since 2004, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Bank Group.

The report calculated the time needed by a sample company to prepare, file and pay three major types of tax, including value-added tax.

It attributed the improvement to structural change in the tax system, technology used by taxpayers and collectors, and streamlined procedure.

Replacing business taxes with value-added tax (VAT) in May 2016 had reduced taxes paid by enterprises by more than 1 trillion yuan ($150 billion) by the end of September.

Allowing VAT payers with better tax credit ratings to verify invoices digitally saved those taxpayers up to 90 percent of the time spent dealing with invoices, the report said.

The report gave credit to the 2015 "Internet plus Taxation Initiative" that shares data among government bodies to avoid repetition.

"Overall, we see that China's tax environment has been continuously evolving, making it easier for companies to fulfil their compliance obligations," the report said.

The report measures the ease of paying taxes for medium-sized private firms across 190 economies.

China intends to have completely overhauled its tax administration system by 2020.