The panel data of 31 provinces and municipalities of China during 1997—2009 are used to set up stochastic production frontier model and K-L method is used to decompose the TFP growth in terms of tax collection. The results reveal that the year by year improvement of China’s tax management efficiency is the main reason for tax supernormal growth, that the expansion of potential taxable base, the frontier forward-move, is the second promotion factor for the tax supernormal growth, however, as for the scale efficiency, tax growth shows scale efficiency of economic development and inefficiency of human resources input, and that the overall contribution value turns out to be negative after the year 2000. China should improve technical efficiency of tax collection and management, further enhance the role of technical progress in tax growth, simplify tax management departments and control the number of tax-related staff.