The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planner, released a list of key software enterprises of national layout compositions in 2010 on Thursday. If the enterprises on the list have not enjoyed a favorable corporate income tax rate lower than 10 percent in 2010, they will be taxed at 10 percent, the Shanghai Securities News reported Friday.

About 20 enterprises were added to the list compared to 2009, the report said.

According to a batch of policies released by the State Council earlier, for those eligible software enterprises, the corporate income tax will be exempt for the next two years and be reduced by half in subsequent years, the newspaper said. This policy is regarded as beneficial to small and medium-sized software start-ups.

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Jiang Weicheng, deputy general manager of Shanghai Hyron Software Co, said the threshold for the list is comparatively higher, but the requirements are clear and implementable, which shows government support for building larger and stronger software enterprises.

According to government policies, enterprises have to meet one of three requirements to qualify for application: First, annual revenue from software business should exceed 100 million yuan ($15.2 million) with no profit loss in the year under review; second, annual exports of software should be more than $4 million and account for more than 50 percent of the enterprise's revenue; and third, annual income from software business should be more than 40 million yuan, and sales revenue should rank in the top five in one of the 15 sectors, including operating systems, database, information security, high-performance computer applications and cloud computing, the report said.