On March 3rd1day, State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce held a symposium on "Deepening the Tax Reform and Helping the Development of Private Enterprises" in Beijing. Alibaba Ma Yun and JD.COM Liu Qiangdong, representatives of e-commerce companies attending the meeting, made suggestions and opinions on the tax burden of online and offline enterprises, which triggered a heated discussion among netizens. Ma Yun pointed out that large enterprises are the main taxpayers, and clearly advocated that Taobao stores could not pay taxes. Liu Qiangdong thinks that there is an enterprise legal person in Taobao at present, and points out that opening a Taobao shop in the name of a natural person conceals the business income of e-commerce, so as to achieve the purpose of tax evasion.

The discussion on e-commerce taxation in China has been endless. This time, the two major e-commerce giants in China once again pushed the issue of e-commerce taxation to the forefront.

According to the relevant provisions of China's provisional regulations on value-added tax, as long as the taxable behavior of value-added tax (sales of goods, etc.) occurs, it belongs to the taxpayer of value-added tax; Enterprise income tax also stipulates the taxable income of enterprises, and sales income is the main taxable income. From this point of view, whether it is online sales or offline store sales, taxable sales of goods and services have occurred, and they should be taxed according to the rules.

In fact, this has something to do with the tax management mode of "controlling taxes by votes" in China. Especially in the aspect of value-added tax management, China manages according to the classified management mode of small-scale taxpayers or general value-added tax taxpayers, and provides relevant invoices, and carries out tax collection and supervision by virtue of the amount issued on the invoices. The so-called "small-scale taxpayer" refers to the value-added tax taxpayer whose annual sales are below the prescribed standards and whose accounting is not perfect, and who cannot submit relevant tax information according to the regulations.

Small-scale taxpayers are taxed at the rate of 3% of sales. For example, if the sales amount is 1000 yuan, they need to pay1000/(1+3%) * 3% = 29.12 yuan tax. Ordinary taxpayers adopt the tax deduction method of "output tax-input tax = taxable amount" to calculate tax payment.

In the actual tax management process, because most physical stores have fixed business premises, they will be supervised by the tax authorities even if they do not invoice, so it is difficult to evade taxes.

However, for online e-commerce, on the one hand, the big data generated by online sales behavior is mainly concentrated in the registration places of institutional service platforms such as Taobao and JD.COM; On the other hand, China's tax administration is based on the principle of place of registration, that is, the tax authorities in other parts of the country can't adopt daily supervision methods such as tax inspection to supervise the e-commerce business activities registered on online Taobao and other platforms, that is, the Shaanxi tax bureau can't directly inspect the enterprises registered and operated in Jiangsu, and there are problems such as poor supervision channels for e-commerce sales activities.

If consumers don't take the initiative to ask for invoices in the process of e-commerce sales, most enterprises will not take the initiative to go to the local tax authorities to declare and pay taxes, which will give online enterprises room to avoid taxes.