"Flexible employment" has become a hot word in "internet plus human resources", especially under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic in the past two years, which provides more possibilities for broadening employment channels. But at the same time, flexible employment has become a shield for some enterprises to get rid of labor costs, especially to avoid tax obligations.
Some time ago, the Meituan, which requires registered individual industrial and commercial households to become its riders, was pushed to the forefront, and everyone slammed individual industrial and commercial households as a flexible way of employment, which brought a series of negative effects. The new tax network recently learned that the new flexible employment project bidding of Meituan no longer requires the registration of individual industrial and commercial households, but is replaced by entrusted collection or temporary tax registration.
In the past two years, individual industrial and commercial households and entrusted agents have experienced various ups and downs with the changes of flexible employment market and supervision. Which is better or worse? While reusing the entrusted levy, will individual industrial and commercial households lose their fragrance?
Entrust and collect the ups and downs
For many small and scattered tax sources, it is difficult for the tax authorities to send special personnel to manage them, so they will entrust organizations or individuals to exercise the duties of taxation instead of the tax bureau, collect taxes according to law and report them to the tax authorities regularly, and then collect and invoice them at the tax bureau.
As early as May 20 13 10, State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China issued the Administrative Measures for Entrusted Collection. The so-called entrusted collection refers to the requirement that the tax authorities entrust the relevant units according to the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Tax Collection and Management, which is conducive to tax control and convenient tax payment, in accordance with the principles of voluntary collection, simple collection, strengthened management and legal entrustment by both parties and relevant state regulations.
In the flexible employment mode, the flexible employment platform must first obtain the "qualification for entrusted collection" before it can be entrusted to collect taxes. The platform will collect and remit taxes and tax rates specified in the qualification certificate within the validity period of the qualification. At present, the local tax authorities of more than ten provinces and cities, including Tianjin, Hunan, Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, Hainan, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Anhui, Gansu, etc., have authorized a number of enterprises to carry out the business of entrusted tax collection.
However, the flexible employment platform based on entrusted levy is also encountering difficulties. A few tax collecting platforms failed to register in real-name registration system, resulting in underpayment of taxes, and a few lawless elements used regulatory loopholes to falsely invoice and launder money. Prior to this, many provinces entrusted to collect licenses were cleaned up, mainly because some provinces issued a large number of licenses in disorder in the early stage, lacking specific laws and regulations and failing to perform regulatory duties, which led to market confusion.
Take Hainan Province as an example. When the heat was high before, more than 200 commissioned certificates were issued in a month. However, by August last year, Hainan Provincial Taxation Bureau stopped adding new entrusted agents, and most expired enterprises no longer renewed their contracts, and at the same time, they no longer supported the summary agency. Natural persons are no longer regarded as individual industrial and commercial households, and natural persons are required to register with their real names, and at the same time, illegal platforms are comprehensively investigated. Hainan Provincial Taxation Bureau hasn't made it clear whether the mode of entrusted collection can still be done. For more than a year, it has been actively promoting the convenience of registration of relevant entities in the platform economy and supporting the Internet platform to register freelancers as individual industrial and commercial households in batches. Nowadays, only some large enterprises are left in Hainan, where the entrusted agent business can continue.
In recent years, in addition to Hainan Province, many provinces have continuously strengthened the management and supervision of entrusted generation, revoked the qualifications of a large number of platforms, and also conducted compliance supervision on Linggong platforms based on entrusted generation. However, "cluster registration" has received more and more attention and has become an important choice for new formats.
Cluster registration and individual industrial and commercial households
Cluster registration means that multiple flexible employees are registered as individual industrial and commercial households at one address in areas permitted by the policy, so as to obtain real individual industrial and commercial households status, enjoy preferential policies for small and micro enterprises, and realize low-cost legal tax payment.
Compared with the entrusted agent, the main advantages of cluster registration are: clear and stable policies, one vote for one household, and clear tax records. Compared with the identity of the entrusted agent, it is undoubtedly more compliant.
In the flexible employment mode, the flexible employment platform helps the flexible employees to find a place where they can do cluster registration, and then helps them to obtain the business license of individual industrial and commercial households after real-name registration, living authentication and other processes through the platform, so as to truly register the flexible employees as "individual industrial and commercial households".
On September 10, 2020, the State Council issued the Notice on Deepening the Reform of Commercial System, Further Relaxing Enterprises' Burden and Stimulating Enterprises' Vitality, which mentioned the support for "individual industrial and commercial households". Individual industrial and commercial households have officially appeared in the public eye, and the flexible employment platform has accelerated to the registration of individual industrial and commercial households, which has begun to become a new alternative to the flexible employment platform.
Flexible employees who are regarded as "individual industrial and commercial households", after signing an agreement with the flexible employment platform, will be able to withhold taxes on behalf of the platform when they complete their tasks and get the tax payment certificate issued by the tax bureau, thus saving the trouble of filing their own taxes. The platform can also easily complete tax calculation, tax filing, tax payment, invoicing and other work through the settlement system directly connected to the tax bureau.
More importantly, the current quota of individual industrial and commercial households is 0.6%, that is, the tax rate of the invoiced amount is 0.6% whether it is100000 or 5 million. Plus value-added tax and surcharge, the tax rate does not exceed 3%. The tax burden is extremely low. It is precisely because of the huge tax incentives behind the individual industrial and commercial households model that some enterprises and parks in China are doing everything possible to turn flexible "natural persons" into "individual industrial and commercial households".
Finally, the model of individual industrial and commercial households went to the other extreme in early September this year because of the "Meituan incident", and the media accused this model of irrationality. In fact, the mode of individual industrial and commercial households can be traced back to the "e-commerce cluster registration" initiated by Dongguan in 20 14. At the beginning of its birth, it solved the problem that individual operators relying on networks and platforms need individual licenses but have no fixed business address.
It's just that individual industrial and commercial households are more troublesome in the process and procedures than those entrusted to collect taxes. Individual industrial and commercial households need to have a registered address, and at the same time they need to keep accounts and file tax returns. If they don't file tax returns, the tax authorities will recover the taxes and late fees that they don't pay or underpay. Previously, some individual industrial and commercial households failed to file tax returns within 6 years and were finally paid back taxes 5 18 10 yuan.
In a word, the intervention of individual industrial and commercial households makes the complete model of "enterprise+Linggong platform+individual industrial and commercial households" take shape, and supports the flexible employment industry to deal with personnel and tax issues more efficiently. The system of individual industrial and commercial households is directly connected with the market supervision department and the tax department, so that flexible practitioners can obtain licenses quickly and accept supervision. Naturally, it is obviously different from the deemed identity entrusted by the previous generation.
Tax issues will always be a "sweet burden" sandwiched between flexible employment platforms and flexible employees. In fact, whether it is entrusted to collect or individual industrial and commercial households, they are two different compensation solutions in the flexible employment model. The similarity between the two is that they can enjoy preferential tax policies for small and micro enterprises, and the purpose is to reduce tax costs legally and legally. For employers and workers, what suits both sides is the best, and there is no superiority or inferiority.
"For this new format and new model of platform economy, we can't simply be willful, either ignore it or die." On March 20 19 15, Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China specifically talked about it. At present, it is the correct supervision attitude of the tax department not to make a one-size-fits-all approach, but to make progress and make progress. Platform economy, whether it is entrusted to collect taxes, individual industrial and commercial households, temporary tax registration, etc., all escort new business forms, and ensure national tax revenue while driving employment.