On January 13, 2024, the Seminar on "Difficult Issues of Taxes and Fees in Resource and Mineral Fields", which was sponsored by the Environmental, Resource and Energy Law Professional Committee of the All China Lawyers Association, organized by the Environment, Resource and Energy Law Professional Committee of the Shanxi Lawyers Association and the Finance and Taxation Law Professional Committee of the Shanxi Lawyers Association, and co-sponsored by the Shanxi Zhonglv Law Firm, was convened in a combination of online and offline mode. Zhang Qian, the partner lawyer of Hwuason Law Firm, was invited to give a lecture on difficult tax-related issues in the coal industry.

      Zhang Qian takes the tax collection and management situation in the field of mineral resources as the entry point, focusing on the tax-related hot issues in the coal industry, such as mining, purchasing, selling, processing and transferring of shares. In coal mining, Zhang Qian combined with a case of water resources tax evasion to analyze the difficult issues of resource tax in mining. In the purchase and sale of coal and transportation, the problem of false opening and tax evasion frequently breaks out in practice, and Zhang Qian analyzes the causes and tax-related risks of different business modes. In terms of false invoicing, due to the requirements of coal mining quota system, part of the over-mined coal can not be sold with invoices, there are coal trading enterprises through a third party company to obtain invoices or the use of new business model to obtain the park's financial rebate is recognized as false invoicing, in addition, the transportation invoices in the coal purchasing and selling transactions have also become the outbreak of the false invoicing cases in the field, and some of the transport invoices obtained by trading enterprises through the network freight transportation platform has been involved in false opening cases. In terms of tax evasion, it is more common to conceal income in coal trading, and enterprises characterized as tax evasion are required to pay back taxes, late payment fees and additional fines. And in the downstream of the coal trading chain, coal-using enterprises such as electric power companies, heating companies, and chemical enterprises have experienced difficulties in the application of environmental protection tax, and there is a big controversy between the two sides of the tax enterprise regarding the characterization of the enterprise's disposal behavior of solid waste such as fly ash and slag, and some of the tax authorities have required the enterprise to make up for environmental protection tax since 2018 in accordance with the amount of emissions. In addition, the transfer of equity is also a part of the coal industry that is prone to tax evasion cases, how to define the price of equity, whether the transferor declares tax according to law and other issues still exist. Finally, Zhang Qian put forward many suggestions for the tax compliance management of coal enterprises in terms of daily operation of enterprises, response to administrative disputes and defense of criminal cases.

      Tax issues in the coal industry involve multiple links and tax types, and some cases have different outcomes in practice due to the complexity of the cases or the controversy over the application of laws. For enterprises in the coal industry, they should strengthen the awareness of tax risk management and tax compliance, improve the business process and strengthen the tax risk screening in daily operation, and communicate and explain the disputed cases in a timely manner in order to strive for favorable characterization.