Article 204(2) of the Criminal Law stipulates that the crime of tax evasion is to be dealt with when a person fraudulently obtains the tax he or she has paid. There is a big controversy in the field of practice about what is meant by “taxes paid”, which leads to a huge difference in the understanding between the case-handling authorities and the persons involved in the case when calculating the amount of money involved in the case as well as determining the offense in some of the cases and makes it difficult to stop the dispute. Recently, I observed that Ningbo Procuratorate issued a typical case of fraudulent export tax rebate, in which the procuratorate explicitly applied Article 204(2) of the Criminal Law and pointed out that “the tax paid in the case should be deducted from the amount of the crime of fraudulent export tax rebate”. This case has certain practical significance in defining “paid tax”, but undeniably there are still many problems that need to be further clarified. This article will take the case as an entry point to analyze and elaborate the author's viewpoints in depth for the benefit of the readers.

Editor's Note: On 9 February 2024, the State Council proposed to "initially build a waste recycling system by 2025"; on 7 March 2024, the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Trade-in" was released, ushering in new development opportunities for the renewable resources industry. However, with the implementation of the new policy of "reverse invoicing" and the outbreak of the financial refund issue, the renewable resources industry has also ushered in new challenges. China Tax will launch a series of articles on tax compliance in the renewable resources industry. Based on the business model of the renewable resources industry, this series will analyse the tax risks of the key nodes in the upstream and downstream chains in the light of the new tax policies in the industry in recent years, so as to help taxpayers to clarify the direction of business adjustment and tax compliance. As the first part of the series of tax compliance in the renewable resources industry, this article will analyse the business models of "retailer - recycling", "recycling - recycling", "recycling - purchasing/selling/producing", and "recycling - production". This article will summarise the typical tax risks in the "retailer-recycling", "recycling-recycling", "recycling-recycling", "recycling-recycling", and "purchasing/selling/production" segments, providing reference for enterprises to identify their own tax risks.

Editor's Note: Since the beginning of this year, multiple departments such as the Audit Bureau and the National Tax Bureau have clearly requested strict investigation of irregular tax incentives and fiscal refund policies issued by various regions. In response, regions such as Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Shanxi, and Tianjin have launched a series of documents in response to central guidance, and the cleanup work for local tax incentives and fiscal refund policies is in full swing, which has had a significant impact on relevant private enterprises. Based on this, This article will systemically interpret the legal responsibilities of illegal tax incentives and fiscal refunds, further analyze the adverse impacts on relevant enterprises, and propose response recommendations, combined with relevant documents issued by various departments in recent months.

On July 24, 2023, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting to analyze and study the current economic situation, pointing out that at present, the supply and demand relationship in China's real estate market has undergone significant changes. Against the background of the impeded operation of the real estate market and the continued downturn in real estate development investment, real estate development enterprises are facing different degrees of capital pressure. At present, housing prices around the world continued to decline, property transactions plummeted, real estate development enterprises sales revenue is far lower than expected at the beginning of the project development, the project profit shrinks significantly. In the past, many real estate development enterprises acquired land use rights in the form of transferring the equity of the project company through open share field transactions, in which the transferor did not pay the land value-added tax, and the subsequent project company needed to bear a huge amount of land value-added tax due to the extremely low land price paid for the land use rights in real estate liquidation. When the real estate price was high, the project company was still able to bear the cost of real estate development including the tax burden. Now that the real estate market is in the doldrums and the profitability of the project has been greatly reduced, the real estate development company may face the risk of not being able to pay the huge amount of land value-added tax. At the same time, according to the previous tax collection and management practice, the transferor of the land use right in the field of explicit shares is also facing the risk of being penetrated to collect land value-added tax or even characterized as tax evasion. In addition, the legal risks faced by the transferring parties are also more complicated due to the different operations of enterprises in the process of land acquisition, establishment of project companies and equity transfer. Based on this, this paper analyzes the tax risks of the equity transferor and transferee in the field transaction of explicit shares based on the current situation of real estate market for readers' reference.

According to recently disclosed documents of the Courts, there have been numerous cases across various regions involving individuals who falsely issued VAT invoices on a commission basis. The highest amount involved in these cases reached 3.7 billion yuan, involving 8,437 invoices and affecting over 3,000 recipients. Industries such as construction engineering widely employ the business model of individuals issuing invoices on a commission basis. Due to issues of issuance limits, some companies have engaged in fake invoice issuance through individual on a commission basis. Under the regulatory stance of jointly combating tax-related crimes by eight departments, not only do the issuing individuals face administrative and criminal liabilities, but downstream recipients may also encounter multiple tax risks. This article reviews recent related cases, analyzes the administrative and criminal liabilities that might be triggered by obtaining invoices issued by individual agents, and provides suggestions for the tax compliance construction of recipients and risk response strategies when issuers are determined to have issued fake invoices.

Flexible employment platforms play an important role in promoting employment and protecting people's livelihood. However, the special features of flexible employment platforms' business model and tax policies make the platforms' tax-related risks quite high, and the tax authorities have become more and more stringent in scrutinizing the authenticity of flexible employment services. Under the upgrading of technical means and the tightening of supervision, false invoicing by flexible employment platforms will surely lead to tax risks. However, even if the business is real, the tax authorities may deny the authenticity of the business if the evidence is not properly retained. Against this background, how should flexible employment platforms adhere to the authenticity of their business and cope with the strong regulation of the industry? In this article, we will take this as a clue to understand the tax-related status quo of the flexible labor industry and the solutions to deal with it.

In the process of production and operation, enterprises may have difficulties in cash flow, or due to improper tax treatment, etc., and under the current regulatory model of "double random, one open", the past tax non-compliance of enterprises may easily lead to the risk of tax reimbursement. Article 203 of the Criminal Law provides for the crime of evading the recovery of tax arrears, which is a "crime of refusing to execute" in the field of taxation. In the state of tax arrears, it is worth paying attention to what behaviors of taxpayers may face the accusation of the crime of evading the recovery of tax arrears. In March this year, the two high judicial interpretations for the first time clearly defined the crime of evading the recovery of tax debts, providing a legal basis for the application of the crime, activating this long-dormant crime, and its related elements of the crime, the circumstances of the crime are worth further discussion. This paper analyzes the boundary between the crime and non-crime of tax-defaulting enterprises evading the recovery of tax arrears in conjunction with cases, with a view to providing reference for enterprises to prevent and respond to criminal risks.

After the refined oil products module went online, new behavioral patterns of false invoicing in the petrochemical industry have emerged, and red-flush false invoicing is one of them. In practice, some judicial authorities have dealt with red-flush false invoicing of refined oil products as the crime of false invoicing, but this does not accurately grasp the true nature of this type of behavior. The author will take the two declaration forms as the key hand to prove that the essence of the behavior of red-flush false invoicing is to sell the inventory data of refined oil products in order to evade the consumption tax, so as to help the judicial authorities to correctly convict the behavior on the basis of correctly exploring the essence of the behavior, so as to provide the practical judicial protection for the only legal interest of the national consumption tax interests that are infringed upon in this kind of cases.