The State Administration of Taxation has continuously strengthened the supervision of tax intermediaries by using tax big data precision audit, and at the same time introduced the central government to clean up the local illegal tax rebate policy, to create a good and fair competition market environment, and to "reduce enterprise costs" as the main business of the Internet tax platform, the living space has been seriously compressed, and the use of "investment promotion" and other tax incentives and false invoicing and other means to earn profits will go to a "dead end". The use of "investment promotion" and other tax incentives and false invoicing and other means to earn profits will go to a "dead end". Tax platform, some rely on tax platform to reduce the tax burden of enterprises will be difficult to continue, and there is a huge risk of false invoicing. The author will analyze relevant cases and policies to reveal the tax risks of the business related to Internet tax platform and make suggestions for readers' reference.

I. Investment frequently involved in tax-related storms, tax platform business model is difficult to sustain

(I) Network propaganda "reduces enterprise costs", but in reality it is false invoicing by using natural persons to issue invoices on behalf of enterprises

Recently, the Procuratorate Daily announced a case of false invoicing by natural persons amounting to 3.7 billion yuan.20 In January 2012, the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) used tax big data to monitor and found that there was an abnormal "surge" of production and business income from personal income tax for natural persons in some areas of Weihai City. After investigation by the local inspection bureau, it was found that there were a large number of invoices issued on behalf of the local government, and the amount of invoices issued on behalf of the local government was huge.

After the joint investigation by the tax inspection, public security, procuratorate and other departments, it was found that the defendants in this case publicized the business of "reducing enterprise costs" through the network publicity, attracting a lot of invoicing intermediaries to negotiate business with them, charging the intermediaries an invoicing fee of 1.7% of the face value of the invoices, and the intermediaries charged the invoiced companies with a higher percentage of the invoicing fee. Invoicing fee. After the business was negotiated, a large number of ordinary VAT invoices were issued on behalf of natural persons in accordance with the information of the invoicee companies. In the end, the defendants were all sentenced for the crime of false invoicing.

Through the news reports, there are several other doubts about this case:

1. The defendants in this case claimed that they were helping the local government to fulfill the task of attracting taxes in exchange for local financial rewards. In other words, these natural persons paid the taxes stated in the general invoices, and then waited for the local government to refund them, did this result in a loss of state tax money? However, it is practically inconclusive whether the crime of false invoicing of general bills has loss of tax as a result element.

2. In the trial stage of this case, the suspect also suggested that there were real business transactions in this case. The invoices issued by natural persons all have a corresponding business. Procuratorial organs after additional investigation found that the so-called real business is false. However, the suspicion also exists as to whether there is the possibility of truthful invoicing.

(II) Guangdong Province intends to formulate regulations that local governments will be administratively liable for tax rebates in violation of the law

On June 9, 2023, Guangdong Province publicly solicited opinions on the "Measures for the Protection of Tax and Fee Collection and Administration in Guangdong Province (Draft for Opinion)". In this "Measures for the Protection of Tax and Fee Collection and Management", Guangdong Province clearly stipulates that "for the relevant departments and units violating the regulations, expanding or narrowing the scope of collection without authorization, not collecting, under-collecting, over-collecting, collecting in advance without authorization, or reducing, exempting, or suspending the collection of taxes and fees without authorization, concealing, transferring, appropriating, or misappropriating taxes and fees without authorization in violation of the regulations or delaying the release of the payment of taxes and fees, and illegally returning taxes and fees that result in the loss of financial revenue loss or loss of social insurance fund, revoke its unauthorized decision in accordance with the regulations, make up for the levy of taxes and fees that should be levied but are not levied, return the excess taxes and fees, and give sanctions to the directly responsible supervisors and other directly responsible persons by the competent authorities in accordance with the law; and if it constitutes a crime, investigate the criminal responsibility in accordance with the law." This clear pursuit of the responsibility of the administrative main body of the illegal tax return will further compress the space for local governments to provide financial incentives, thus compressing the business of the Internet fiscal and tax platform.

(III) Summary: fiscal and tax platforms assist others in tax evasion, and the criminal risk of false opening and tax evasion is extremely high

In recent years, the State Council has required the cleanup of local irregular fiscal rebate policies, gradually compressing the development space of Internet fiscal and tax platforms. The State Administration of Taxation (SAT) has also issued a number of documents requiring centralized remediation of tax-related intermediaries. In practice, some Internet tax platforms have taken advantage of the local government's tax rebate policy to carry out the behaviors of false invoicing and helping tax evasion, and many of them are facing serious criminal sanctions. In the current context of "tax governance by numbers", tax big data can detect the risk of false invoicing, so that false invoicing and other illegal behaviors have no place to hide, and the risk is very high. In the following, this article will firstly summarize the risky business models of common Internet tax platforms in recent years and explain the countermeasures of the invoiced enterprises.

II. Common Risky Business Models of Internet Tax Platforms

(I) Utilizing local investment promotion and tax rebate policies to help enterprises reduce their tax burden through false opening violations

Through the consultation and representation of Hwuason's lawyers, the author noticed that quite a number of Internet fiscal and tax platforms were born with the local fiscal rebate policy and enterprise income tax approved collection policy. Localities provide VAT input rebate or other financial reward and subsidy policies with the intention of reducing the tax burden of enterprises or encouraging the development of some coal and waste materials trading business that lacks inputs, but some Internet finance and tax platforms register shell invoicing enterprises in such parks and falsely issue VAT invoices or ordinary invoices externally for the invoiced enterprises to offset the enterprise costs or input tax to achieve the so-called The tax platform registers shell invoicing enterprises in such parks to issue false VAT invoices or ordinary invoices to offset enterprise costs or input tax for the invoiced enterprises, so as to achieve the so-called purpose of "reducing the tax burden of enterprises". Under this kind of business, some of the invoiced enterprises do not have sufficient compliance awareness and think that they can obtain input invoices or cost invoices at will, thus concealing tax risks.

(II) Helping customers to register companies in the park to enjoy tax rebate policies, but not to carry out business in substance

There is another type of business model that is more compliant than the previous type of business, but there are also problems. This type of business is: the Internet tax platform has mastered the tax rebate policies of many places in the country, so it proposes that it can help customers to register and set up enterprises in the park, and mandatorily act as the financial and invoicing agent of the enterprise in order to earn the agent's bookkeeping fees. The customer then put some business carried out in the field, through the enterprise to go contracts, accounts, to enjoy tax benefits. This is not in line with the principle of substantial operation of the business carried out, and there is also the possibility of being denied by the tax authorities or even found to be a fraudulent act of financial subsidies.

(III) Utilizing approved local tax policies to register individual households and sole proprietorship enterprises in violation of the law

Internet fiscal platforms not only help enterprises evade taxes, but also help high-income, high-net-worth individuals evade personal income tax. In order to attract investment, some places have implemented the policy of setting up sole proprietorships or individual businesses in parks to collect income tax at a certain percentage of the approved tax rate. Some Internet tax platforms help customers to register a large number of sole proprietorships or individual business households in these places enjoying the approved tax policy, and then, after splitting the income, use the low approved tax rate for sole proprietorships and individual business households to evade tax.

(IV) Utilizing the convenience of natural person's invoicing to issue ordinary invoices to the outside world

In the park economy gradually tightened today, some Internet tax platforms are eyeing the natural person invoicing. Because of China's "camp change" since, a number of industries such as waste materials, transportation, coal, etc. to varying degrees, the supply side of the natural person can not invoice the difficulties. Therefore, similar to Shandong and other places began to pilot in the natural person electronic tax bureau website, cell phone app on behalf of the simple opening of electronic general invoices to facilitate the policy. Some platforms have taken advantage of this convenient policy of issuing invoices on behalf of natural persons to carry out the business of issuing false invoices and invoices on behalf of foreigners.

III. High risk of obtaining false invoices, enterprises should be legally compliant to reduce tax burden

(I) Accurately recognize the tax risks of the old business model of Internet taxation platforms

Internet tax platforms usually set up a unified platform, set up offices across the country, and the person in charge of the region or the manager is responsible for publicity, business negotiation, etc., and after accepting the success of the synchronization of processing to help customers set up enterprises in the parks across the country. This, due to a large number of business operations is responsible for the platform, for the customer is not transparent, the risk is:

1.If the platform utilizes the enterprises on hand that control the clients to issue false invoices to the outside world, the clients will be implicated;

2.If the invoice issued by the platform to the customer is non-compliant or falsely invoiced by the shell enterprise, the customer will face the adjustment of VAT and EIT and even administrative penalties because of accepting the falsely invoiced invoice.

3.if the customer and the platform there is false invoicing on the criminal conspiracy, the customer will also because of the composition of the acceptance of false invoicing and the public security organs to investigate and even be held criminally liable.

(II) Emphasizing the authenticity of business and forming a complete chain of business evidence

Real business is an important guarantee to avoid tax-related risks. Collusion to provide false materials is not desirable, even if the use of clever means to forge information, false behavior will also have loopholes, therefore, whether for the customer registration of sole proprietorships or individual business to be based on the customer's true will, in addition, but also to avoid the escrow of the customer's tax-control disk, on behalf of the invoicing, invoices and other invoicing services by mail. When establishing cooperative relationships with customers, attention should be paid to the chat records of the conversation process, business contracts, bank transfer vouchers, work records, work results and other materials to be preserved to form a completed chain of evidence, in order to prevent the customer from being involved in the characterization of tax evasion.

(III) Comply with the application of tax incentives and construct a perfect business model for long-term development

With the increasing risk of the Internet taxation platform, we suggest that the majority of enterprises accurately choose compliant taxation intermediary service organizations for the declaration and enjoyment of legally compliant tax concessions, and develop a tax-compliant business model within the framework of the law.

IV. Tax Compliance Path of Internet Tax Platform in the Context of Big Data

Since the implementation of the Golden Tax series applied to tax auditing, the technical level of Golden Tax Phase I, II and III is constantly upgrading, and after the full implementation of Golden Tax Phase IV, the formation of a big data enterprise portrait, the illegal and irregular tax-related behaviors of the Internet finance and tax platform will have no place to escape. Therefore, tax compliance is the feasible way to operate in a sustainable manner and obtain long-term profits.

(I) Correctly understand the national tax policy to prevent tax risks

In 2014, the State Council issued the "Notice on Cleaning up and Standardizing Preferential Policies on Taxation and Other Preferences" (Guofa [2014] No. 62), aiming to establish a "national unified market" and standardize preferential policies on taxation and other preferences, but due to the economic downturn and other reasons for the issuance of the "Notice on Preferential Policies on Taxation and Other Preferential Policies" (Guofa [ 2015] No. 25), the temporary tax compliance is the way to go. However, due to the economic downturn and other reasons, the "Notice on Matters Related to Preferential Policies on Taxation and Other Preferences" (Guo Fa [2015] No. 25) was issued, which suspended the cleanup process, and the "Guiding Opinions on Further Promoting the Reform of the Fiscal System Below the Provincial Level" (Guo Baifa [2022] No. 20) was issued in 2022, which issued a strict policy to clean up the illegal subsidies and refunds. tax planning, release similar tax planning in violation of the law, publicize illegal fiscal rebates or tax policies, and distort the interpretation of the national tax policy regulations, and there are extremely large tax-related risks. The Internet tax platform should be guided by legal norms and based on the premise of correctly understanding and applying various tax policies, and provide enterprises with legally compliant and reasonable tax planning arrangements on the basis of real, reasonable and scientific business.

(II) Constructing tax compliance system and forming risk isolation mechanism

With the rapid development of the economy, the business and scale of the Internet taxation platform is also expanding, and the number of employees increases, which requires the platform to establish a tax compliance system as soon as possible to isolate the tax-related risks, in order to prevent the manager or the business personnel from implicating the enterprise or the actual controller when they collude with the customers in the process of false invoicing and assisting the customers in evading taxes in the course of business development. As the interconnected tax platform grows bigger and stronger, it is necessary to build a tax compliance system, so that once employees are held criminally liable for fraudulent invoicing and other acts, the platform can build a tax compliance system as an effective evidence for the defense of innocence.

(III) Finding a way of relief when being tax audited or filed for investigation

After receiving the Notice of Proven Fraudulent Invoicing and Letter of Concurrence, the Internet tax platform should calmly respond to tax audits, actively cooperate with the tax authorities in retrieving information and other procedures, comb through the business process in detail, and find materials that can prove the authenticity of the business to explain in detail to the tax authorities; for those that have been transferred to the public relations or have been subjected to public security investigation, it should actively exercise the right to plead and prove that there is no criminal act. Regardless of the stage, it is recommended that Internet tax platforms strive to be able to consult legal professionals at a favorable time to find ways and means of relief to avoid being caught in the whirlpool of tax-related administrative penalties or criminal sanctions.