What is tax planning?
For our country, tax planning is still a relatively new term, so many people simply don't know what it is.
In America, the business of tax agency is very active. Every March and April, Americans begin to declare their taxes for one year. Faced with a large number of tickets, most Americans are bored. In order to save worry and effort, many Americans list their annual income and expenditure to the tax authorities, which helps to declare, and finally refund more and make up less.
"This service of providing tax expertise for units or individuals is real tax planning."
Manager Zhang of a financial accounting service company in Nanjing introduced that their company consists of accountants, certified public accountants and a group of professionals with rich experience in fiscal and taxation management, and has standardized bookkeeping procedures. They can flexibly use the existing tax laws and regulations to help enterprises make tax planning, so as to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of companies that come to consult, pay taxes according to law, and reasonably reduce the tax burden for these companies.
For the business operated by the company, this is in line with the original intention of setting up a tax agency in China. As a new tertiary industry, the original intention of "tax planning" is to standardize the behavior of taxpayers and pay taxes reasonably through the planning of tax agencies, so that all units and individuals can finally develop good tax habits.
Distorted "tax planning"
By the end of the reporting period on April 2, 2007, the number of individual taxpayers with an annual income of 6.5438+200,000 yuan had exceeded 6.5438+600,000 yuan?
However, in the actual operation process, "tax planning" has been distorted in many places in China. Speaking of "tax planning", some people even call it "magic". Because many times, as long as the tax planner "plans", the tax paid by the unit or individual will suddenly be reduced by half.
From the perspective of English, tax planning and tax avoidance are basically the same concept, both of which refer to taxpayers reducing or avoiding their tax obligations through certain legal acts.
However, our understanding of "tax planning" is easy to go into two misunderstandings: first, we don't know the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion, and mistake some tax evasion methods for tax avoidance; The second is to deliberately evade taxes under the guise of tax planning.
Objectively speaking, although tax avoidance and tax evasion are easy to distinguish conceptually, in practice, the difference between them is sometimes difficult to grasp. Sometimes taxpayers' awareness of tax avoidance is too strong, and it becomes unfair tax avoidance, which can be legally recognized as tax evasion.
An example is very illustrative: at present, China's tax law implements certain tax incentives for welfare enterprises. According to the enterprise income tax law, welfare enterprises with "four disabled" employees accounting for more than 35% of the total number of production personnel are temporarily exempted from enterprise income tax; Where the placement of "four disabled" personnel accounts for more than 10% of the total number of production personnel, but it does not reach 35%, the enterprise income tax will be levied by half. Therefore, in order to enjoy this tax preference, some enterprises recruit disabled people in society, so that the "four disabled" personnel in their enterprises can reach the proportion stipulated in the tax law. However, these disabled people are sent home on vacation after being recruited as employees by enterprises, and only receive a small amount of living expenses every month.
"A step forward in' tax avoidance' is' tax evasion'". Some people say that this practice of enterprises belongs to tax planning, but in fact, this practice is obviously taking advantage of the law and belongs to tax evasion.
The society has doubts about "tax planning"
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It is precisely because of the misunderstanding of "tax planning" that many people still have doubts about this new thing.
"There are often tax planning companies lobbying me, saying that they can help me save taxes. At first, I didn't understand what' tax planning' was, but after further inquiry, I found that' tax planning' was' reasonable tax avoidance'. But in fact, I don't know if this is reasonable. "
After learning about his company's business, these tax planning companies put forward a tax avoidance scheme: try to find some invoices, such as accommodation and catering invoices, tickets, communication invoices and even some office supplies invoices, to offset part of their income, so that they can pay less taxes.
It is said to be "reasonable tax avoidance", but he always feels that something is wrong, because it is obviously income, but it has to be deducted with invoices. Isn't this a way to evade taxes?
Although "tax planning" can save half of the tax, Chen Dapeng finally refused the business provided by the tax planner. "I always feel that this is a bit illegal."
Huang Hua, who works in a foreign trade enterprise in Nanjing, has the same confusion. Huang Hua told reporters that his annual income is more than 200,000 yuan. In the past two years, at the end of each year, a tax agency called him and said that he could help him "avoid taxes reasonably". But in fact, the scheme put forward by these tax agencies is to deduct income with invoices. "Isn't this a loophole in the law?" Huang Hua said.
According to the business personnel of a company, if an individual wants to "avoid taxes reasonably", generally speaking, his tax agent can communicate with the relevant person in charge of the company's finance through the company's account books and convert part of his salary and bonus into expenses, such as car travel expenses, mobile phone expenses, housing subsidies, business travel subsidies, etc. If the tax avoidance is successful, they will charge a handling fee of about 1000 yuan. The business personnel assured the reporter that the tax they helped evade must exceed 1000 yuan.
"Tax Planning" Wandering on the Edge of Law
The business done by some tax agencies is legal in form, but it is actually illegal to exploit the loopholes of the law and achieve the purpose of tax avoidance by falsely charging it out, which will eventually lead to the loss of national tax revenue.
Many tax agencies are separated from the tax system. It should be said that they are familiar with the whole tax collection process and the tax laws of the country. On the positive side, they can help units or individuals with tax planning without paying too much tax; On the other hand, they can take advantage of their familiarity with the business and exploit the loopholes in the tax law.
It is understood that since the beginning of August this year, Jiangsu national tax and local tax departments have jointly inspected the business of tax agencies.
In many places, "reasonable tax avoidance" has become a "new concept of financial management" pursued by some operators, and "reasonable tax avoidance" institutions have emerged. The popularity and spread of "reasonable tax avoidance" will inevitably lead to some illegal transactions under the cloak of "reasonable tax avoidance".
From the legal point of view, reasonable tax avoidance is an economic behavior to reduce tax payment through legal means and methods. Tax evasion refers to the taxpayer's behavior of concealing the real situation and deceiving the tax authorities by various undisclosed illegal means for the purpose of not paying or underpaying taxes. Some tax agencies help units or individuals to deduct income with invoices, so as to achieve the purpose of tax avoidance. In fact, they help units and individuals to evade taxes, which is illegal.
National tax awareness needs to be strengthened.
There is a popular saying in American society: "There are two inevitable things in a person's life, one is death, and the other is paying taxes." It is not difficult to see how much Americans attach importance to paying taxes. It is also under the influence of this tax awareness that the business of tax agencies in the United States will be carried out formally and vigorously.
Compared with the United States, the development of market economy in China is still in the primary stage, and people's tax awareness is not very strong, which makes it difficult for tax planning agencies in China to survive. In order to attract customers, some agencies can only play the signboard of "tax avoidance", but in practice, "tax avoidance" eventually becomes tax evasion because there is not so much tax to escape.
The rise of "reasonable tax avoidance" is a manifestation of social progress. However, for this new thing, in addition to requiring the government to actively strengthen the anti-tax avoidance work, it is also necessary to build a social credit system as soon as possible, standardize the behavior of financial intermediaries and agencies, and make illegal tax evaders take advantage of it as much as possible, so that the national tax revenue will not be lost because of the malicious operation of "reasonable tax avoidance".
For the irregular "tax planning" behavior in the current society, the relevant departments of our country must further improve the tax law so that there is no loophole for the agency.
Of course, in order to fundamentally solve this problem, China must further enhance the awareness of the whole people to pay taxes. "When the society has formed a good tax atmosphere, the business engaged by tax agencies will naturally be more standardized."