Promote tax compliance in the live broadcasting industry.
In recent years, the rapid development of the Internet has promoted social flexible employment. Webcast is a prominent new industry in the service economy. However, the brutal growth of the live broadcasting industry has led to chaos such as inadequate platform management and anchor tax evasion.
Recently, the state Internet Information Office, the State Administration of Taxation and the State Administration of market supervision jointly issued the opinions on further standardizing the profit-making behavior of webcast and promoting the healthy development of the industry (hereinafter referred to as the opinions), which put forward more specific requirements for standardizing the industry and further promoting the healthy development of the industry.
Many experts interviewed believed that the opinions focused more on the tax supervision of the live broadcasting industry than the previous norms on the content governance and live delivery behavior of the live broadcasting industry. It focused not only on the anchor, but also on the norms of MCN institutions and platforms, highlighting the importance of the compliance of live broadcasting profits.
For the future tax supervision of the live broadcasting industry, we may work together from three aspects: improving legislation, building big data smart tax and departmental coordination. Experts remind that while establishing and improving the departmental information sharing mechanism, we should also protect the legitimate rights of taxpayers in business data, trade secrets and personal privacy.
fill the loopholes in tax collection and management, MCN, platform responsibility compaction
The opinions sent a clear regulatory signal to the whole live broadcasting industry. Shi Wenwen, director of the finance and tax law research center of China University of political science and law, believes that compared with the measures for the management of webcast marketing (Trial) jointly issued by seven departments on April 23, 2021, the focus of the opinions is on the Tax Governance of the webcast industry. The tax management loopholes in the development of the webcast industry are the direct reason for the introduction of the opinions.
“In the past, the supervision of the live broadcasting industry mainly focused on the standardization of live broadcasting content and live delivery behavior by the online letter and market supervision departments. This time, the participation in the collaborative supervision of the tax department highlights the importance of the compliance of live broadcasting profit and the standardization of flow realization.” Ma CE, co-founder of Zhejiang Kenting law firm, told the 21st Century Business Herald that with the rise of a large number of private domain traffic in the live broadcasting industry, the tax problem of private domain has attracted much attention.
Since last year, the tax department has successively exposed the suspected tax evasion cases of well-known webcast Zhu Chenhui (Sydney), Lin Shanshan, Huang Wei (Weiya) and “donkey sister-in-law Pingrong”, many of which evade taxes by hiding personal income, fictitious business, changing the nature of income, false declaration and so on.
In December 2021, the Inspection Bureau of Hangzhou Taxation Bureau of Zhejiang Province found out that Huang Wei (Weiya), the anchor, falsely declared tax evasion by hiding the commission income she obtained from the live broadcasting platform, illegally loaded personal labor remuneration (Commission with goods, pit fee, etc.) into the partnership, evaded paying the personal income tax that should have been paid, and instead paid tax according to the tax rate of the partnership (approved and levied by small and micro enterprises).
The difficulty of tax collection and management in the live broadcasting industry lies in the determination of the nature of income. Wang Huayu, deputy director of the finance and tax law research center of Shanghai Jiaotong University, analyzed to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the opinions focused on three key points in tax collection and management: first, fulfill the withholding obligation according to law and implement the withholding responsibility of platforms and live broadcasting service institutions; Second, standardize tax services and collection. While strengthening the guidance of industry norms and policy guidance, sort out and standardize the areas that may lead to tax violations, such as approved collection, entrusted collection and invoicing, and strengthen the ability of big data analysis and collection and management; The third is to crack down on tax related violations and crimes. If the circumstances are serious, we should increase punishment and exposure. At the same time, it is mentioned that intermediaries and relevant responsible persons who carry out “tax planning” in violation of laws and regulations should be seriously dealt with. The tax authorities will strengthen the collection, management and law enforcement from these three aspects, and all platforms, live broadcasting service institutions and relevant practitioners should make targeted self rectification or effective norms.
“Both the MCN organization that signed the labor contract with the anchor and the studio established by the anchor have put forward executable requirements, filling the management gap in the past.” A well-known live platform employee told the 21st Century Business Herald that the opinions reflected the important trend of strengthening the supervision of MCN institutions in recent years.
In March this year, among the 10 key tasks announced at the press conference of the “Qinglang” series of special actions in 2022, including the special action of “Qinglang · MCN organization information content chaos rectification”, which defined the standards and responsibilities of MCN organization in carrying out information content business activities, and also aligned with the requirements for the responsibility of the live broadcasting platform in the provisions on Ecological Governance of network information content, Once the phenomenon of “the board only hits the platform” in the past is changed, it can better “walk on multiple legs” for industry governance. In 2021, the measures for the administration of online performance brokerage institutions issued by the Ministry of culture and tourism came into force, which also defines the main responsibilities to be performed by MCN institutions and puts forward the pre requirements of “licensed operation”.
“From a comprehensive point of view, the current multiple regulatory lines have built a multi-dimensional and three-dimensional, and initially formed a MCN organization management standard covering ‘before, during and after’, which is also more conducive to the formation of a healthy pattern of platform management organization and organization management anchor.” Said the above practitioners.
The Opinions also put forward the requirements for the live broadcasting platform to implement the main responsibility of the platform and actively assist in law enforcement. If the platform needs to be implemented every six months, the platform should submit the information such as the anchor’s personal identity, live broadcasting account, network nickname, reward account, income type and profit situation every six months.
“The requirements of the opinions on the responsibilities of the platform subjects are very clear. For the first time, the type and duration of information provided to the regulatory authorities are refined, which helps to verify the real turnover of the anchor as the tax basis.” Shi Wenwen believes that the platform, as a third party in the live broadcasting industry, is an important channel to obtain basic tax information such as account information, anchor income type and business information. Only by compacting the responsibilities of the platform and taking measures in place, can the anchor’s personal tax payment be more basic. Ma CE said that for the platform, the relationship with the guild and the anchor will be more clearly defined in the future, and the bonus payment rules with the anchor will be more clear and compliant.
improve departmental information sharing and protect personal privacy and legal rights
In view of the emerging format of webcast, China’s tax legislation lags behind and the corresponding policy system is not perfect, which makes the real taxpayer in the “gray area” of tax supervision.
The introduction of the opinions indicates that while the e-commerce law itself should be revised and interpreted in a timely manner according to the needs of economic and social development, other relevant laws, regulations and policy documents, such as the civil code, the anti unfair competition law, the network information security law, the measures for the administration of Webcast marketing (for Trial Implementation), the guiding opinions on strengthening the standardized management of webcast, etc, It also adjusts and standardizes relevant e-commerce or online sales behavior.
\u3000\u3000 “For emerging business, the relevant tax laws and regulations should take into account the new characteristics of the industry when they are specifically applied, but this does not mean that the tax collection and management of the industry is’ impossible to rely on ‘. Whether it is the collection and management of tax authorities or taxpayers’ declaration and tax payment, they can carry out business planning and declaration management in accordance with the current tax law, the prevailing transaction rules and the principle of rationality, but there are still different opinions and views on collection and management in some fields.
”Wang Huayu believes that the introduction of the opinions can promote the tax authorities to issue more detailed collection and management standards and tax guidance guidelines.
“China’s current tax administration law mainly regulates industry and traditional economic forms. In the future, the main responsibilities or assistance obligations of live broadcasting platforms, including third-party financial institutions, in tax administration can be revised accordingly.” Shi Wenwen gives suggestions at the legislative level.
The governance difficulties of traditional tax supervision means also lie in the difficulty of obtaining data and the asymmetry of information. On March 24, 2021, the State Council Office of the CPC Central Committee issued the opinions on further deepening the reform of tax collection and management, which clearly proposed to speed up the construction of smart tax, promote the application of new technologies such as big data and cloud computing in the field of tax collection and management, deeply promote accurate law enforcement, fine service, accurate supervision and sincere governance, and significantly improve tax compliance and social satisfaction. According to the opinions, wechat, tax departments and market supervision departments should establish and improve the departmental information sharing mechanism, strengthen the analysis of tax big data and improve the normalized supervision mechanism.
Department coordination is the only way for tax supervision of the live broadcasting industry in the future. Wang Huayu believes that the cross departmental information sharing mechanism can effectively discover, identify and analyze the business status, behavior trajectory and tax picture of market subjects as taxpayers, which plays a very important role in improving the refined tax collection and management ability of tax authorities. At the same time, he put forward suggestions on the application of big data in the field of Taxation: “we should standardize the use of tax data and protect the legitimate rights of taxpayers in business data, trade secrets and personal privacy.”
Live broadcast tax supervision involves many responsible subjects, including network security law, personal information protection law, anti unfair competition law, advertising law, etc. it needs the cooperation of online information department and market supervision department. Therefore, the shared assistance between supervision departments will become the focus in the future. Shi Wenwen said that establishing a long-term mechanism of cross departmental collaborative supervision, improving the connection between relevant laws and supervision, and forming systematic governance and joint and collaborative governance are the focus of reform and improvement in the future.
But maze admitted that this is also a difficulty. Information sharing involves many departments, and the platform behavior involves the joint participation of multiple subjects. Whether all subjects should submit information remains to be clarified. At the same time, many places across the country are exploring public data management methods. The different construction of information sharing mechanism and how to avoid excessive collection and realize information security sharing and protection need to be further explored.
“The real implementation of information sharing is a long process. As long as local governments develop towards sharing, CO governance and coordination, they should be encouraged. After having a certain foundation, they should slowly improve the standardization and level of sharing, from local to national.” Shi Wenwen said.
