economy - Shanghai's troublesome bicycle tax

Small stories in China can be rather revealing and this story in the Shanghai Daily really tells a lot about how the society works.
Bicyle owners have to pay an annual tax of eight Renminbi (just a bit less than one US dollar) and that is about double the tax ten years ago when I arrived. Needless to say that I never bothered to pay that tax. Foreigners were never asked to pay that tax and even the Shanghainese never took up the habit in a serious way. Officially Shanghai has nine million bicycles, but on 1.68 million, about one fifth, pays the bicycle tax.
Some of the Shanghainese would do everything to save money, even those lousy eight Renminbi, but for most it is just too troublesome to pay. And for the tax office it is too troublesome to go after the people that do not pay. On top of that, since there is no fine, even no authority that can enforce the bicycle tax, it is rather easy to avoid the bureaucracy.
Only very few jurisdictions in China have a bicycle tax. Just scrapping it would be the easiest thing to do, probably be much cheaper than trying to collect it. But who wants to have things easy when they can be difficult too?