Due to the operating characteristics of the coal industry, a large number of coal enterprises have the chronic problem of separation of invoices and goods at the purchasing end. In the past, due to the false VAT invoices legislation adopts a simple crime, the judicial authorities that there is a false invoicing that constitutes the crime, the coal industry, the separation of votes and goods belongs to the original judicial interpretation of the false invoicing, but also the false invoicing of the crime of criminal responsibility. Recently, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the "Interpretation of Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law to the Handling of Criminal Cases of Endangering the Administration of Tax Collection" (Law No. 4 [2024] ), which makes clear provisions on the elements of the crime of false invoicing, and at the same time, also makes clear that false invoicing that does not aim at fraudulently offsetting the taxes and does not result in fraudulent loss of tax due to the offsetting should be out of the crime. For cases involving invoices in the coal industry in which the court trial process directly qualifies the offence of fraudulent invoicing without examining the subjective purpose of the perpetrator or the objective harmful consequences of the act, a complaint may be actively lodged.

Customs import payment books, transportation invoices, waste materials invoices, agricultural products acquisition vouchers as VAT special invoices can be used for VAT deduction outside of the voucher was once active on the stage of history. With the tax reform, transportation invoice, waste materials invoice was abolished, "four small tickets" now left "two small tickets". With the comprehensive on-line of Golden Tax III, the supervision of VAT invoices has reached a new height, but due to the fact that the customs and the tax bureau belong to two systems, information sharing has not yet been formed in the early stage of on-line, which leads to the use of Customs Import Payment Letter by some unscrupulous elements to carry out false invoicing and tax cheating.In June 2017, the Customs Payment Letter in the tax bureau to realize the network verification of the voucher audit and checking management information system; in February 2020, the information audit of the payment letter will be carried out. In February, the auditing and comparison of the information of the payment book was changed from manual uploading to selecting the confirmation platform for confirmation, and the customs data was finally docked with the comprehensive service platform for VAT invoices. At one stage, there are still some phenomena of using the customs import payment book for false opening, in this year's tax authorities in conjunction with public security, customs, the People's Bank of China and other departments to jointly combat the "three false" activities exposed, and implicated many downstream coal, steel trading enterprises, it is worthwhile for entrepreneurs to learn from the warning.

Due to the existence of the quota system, the phenomenon of coal trading enterprises purchasing goods without invoices from small coal kilns is more common, for this part of the "dry goods" without invoices, coal trading enterprises often obtain invoices from a third party, and the invoices correspond to the goods sold by the third party or sold by the coal trading enterprises to those who don't need invoices. The goods corresponding to the invoices are then sold by the third party itself or sold by the coal trading enterprise to individual households that do not need invoices to recycle funds. For this kind of behavior, from the perspective of the third party is the separation of invoices and goods, while from the perspective of the coal trading enterprise is "according to the fact on behalf of the invoice". In the current judicial interpretations, the "actual invoicing" does not constitute false invoicing, but in practice, there are different characterizations of such behavior by coal trading enterprises. In this article, Huatax will analyze with readers how such behavior should be characterized through a case of suspected false opening by a coal trading enterprise.

The coal industry is an industry with a high incidence of tax-related risks. Compared with other industries, the tax-related risks of coal enterprises have certain special characteristics, which are manifested in the fact that coal enterprises have both the problem of insufficient inputs and the problem of surplus inputs. This is because the coal trade industry chain is long, for the source end of the small coal kilns to buy coal trading enterprises, due to the small coal kilns over-mining and other issues can not issue invoices, the coal trading enterprises will be insufficient inputs. As for the trading enterprises selling coal to scattered consumers at the terminal, because consumers do not need invoices, the coal trading enterprises will have the problem of surplus tickets. How to deal with the two kinds of tax-related risks when they occur at the same time deserves further study.

Corporate criminal compliance is an important criminal dispute resolution mechanism that is currently being promoted nationwide, with the aim of safeguarding economic operations, guiding well-run enterprises onto the path of legal compliance through compliance and rectification, and mitigating and bridging the adverse impact and consequences of corporate crime. The procedure can be widely applied in many fields, especially in coal such as the industry's own inherent reasons, coal enterprises are forced to fall into the tax-related criminal risk, through criminal compliance can save the enterprise, stabilize the development of the industry, with positive significance. This time, the Shanxi Provincial Procuratorate announced a batch of cases in which the criminal compliance procedure was applied to the "truthful opening" of coal enterprises, which is of typical significance. Accordingly, this paper discusses criminal compliance and defense strategies for readers' reference.

As China's road transportation is mainly carried out by individual carriers, the transportation costs incurred in the purchase and sale of coal cannot obtain sufficient deduction invoices, and in the long run, coal trading enterprises and coal-using enterprises cannot bear the burden of enterprise income tax and value-added tax brought about by this. In order to solve the invoice problem brought by the above situation, most of the coal trading enterprises and coal-using enterprises choose to obtain VAT invoices through a third party, which in turn leads to the risk of false invoicing. Recently, a coal transportation enterprise represented by Huatax lawyers was suspected of the crime of false invoicing of VAT, and the public prosecutor accused the party involved in the case of false invoicing of price and tax amounting to RMB 110 million, and prosecuted the party for the crime of false invoicing of VAT, and the party faced a penalty of more than ten years. Huatax lawyers intervened in the case after the public prosecution authority transferred the case to the court for trial, and provided first instance defense services for the case. After many communications with the court, by elaborating the defense views on the industry characteristics of coal transportation business, the constitutive elements of the crime of false VAT invoice and the crime of illegal purchase of VAT invoice, the transaction substance of coal transportation case, etc., the court finally accepted the defense opinions of the lawyers, and changed the verdict to the defendant constituting the crime of illegal purchase of VAT invoice, and sentenced the first defendant to two years of fixed-term imprisonment. The decision of this case is another benign exploration of judicial practice on the constituent elements of the crime of false invoicing, and the result is of great significance for the similar cases being heard in the coal industry.

On May 26, 2021, the leading group of the Inner Mongolia Party Committee and government's special rectification work for irregularities and violations in the field of coal resources summarized the concentrated investigation of coal-related corruption cases. Coal-related corruption backtracked for 20 years, and over the past year the region's discipline inspection and supervision organs have accepted nearly 4,000 cases involving coal-related issues, arrested nearly 1,000 people involved in coal-related criminal offenses, and recovered more than 40 billion yuan of accumulated losses. This special action, focusing on the rectification of illegal and unlawful access to coal resources, selling coal resources, illegal and unlawful allocation of coal resources, in the process of investigating and dealing with official corruption in the illegal mining behavior is frequently exposed, and then dig out the coal enterprises tax evasion, false opening cases, coal enterprises involved in tax criminal risk by implication and the full eruption. In the criminal circle of "corruption - illegal mining - tax evasion - false opening", how to prevent, control and cope with the tax-related criminal risk of coal enterprises? How to prevent, control and cope with the risk? This article will put forward relevant suggestions for coal enterprises' reference.

The coal industry is a high risk area for tax-related risks. In the past, due to the proliferation of small coal kilns for illegal coal mining, the mined coal could not be sold through normal channels, and enterprises purchasing coal invoiced through a third party. In recent years, with the deepening of the policies of removing production capacity, accelerating energy transformation, and promoting environmental protection, coal production capacity has begun to be controlled around the world, and coal-using enterprises purchasing over-mined coal need to look for a third party to issue invoices. The demand for invoicing has given rise to the invoicing industry, and some senior executives of state-owned coal purchasing and marketing enterprises have used the qualifications of state-owned enterprises to engage in invoicing for the purpose of falsely increasing their performance, which has triggered the risk of false invoicing.