From the legal point of view, tax avoidance is a neutral word, and there is nothing shameful about it. It can be called tax saving or tax planning, that is, how taxpayers, including enterprises and individuals, pay taxes at least within the scope permitted by law. There is also a gray area between legal tax avoidance and tax evasion, which is more dangerous and taxpayers should be cautious. Legal tax avoidance conforms to tax laws and policies and is an act not prohibited by law; Violation of tax laws and policies, that is, tax evasion, will be cracked down. This is the attitude of the law towards tax avoidance.
At present, the common methods are as follows:
(1) Arrange the salary payment as far as possible under the allowable pre-tax deduction;
(2) Improve the welfare level of employees and reduce the nominal income;
(3) Delaying or advancing can be adopted to roughly equalize the monthly wage income;
(4) Taxpayers receive labor remuneration by stages for as long as possible.
Among them, the methods to improve the welfare level of employees and reduce nominal income mainly include:
(1) It is an effective way to avoid personal income tax by providing residence for enterprises;
(2) Enterprises provide holiday travel allowance;
(3) Purchase the financial insurance of the insurance company;
(4) Part of the salary is included in the payroll, and the rest of the salary is reimbursed by invoice;
(5) Strive for the proportion of welfare payments from the tax authorities and take more welfare;
(6) Distribution in kind;
(7) overpaying the provident fund (but the same enterprises are also facing overpayment, as if the contribution ratio in Chongqing is certain).
(8) Enterprises provide employee welfare facilities.
For example: 1 The enterprise provides free lunch, or the enterprise directly pays the boarding management fee;
2 enterprises provide and arrange free medical benefits;
3. Use residential equipment provided by enterprises;
4 enterprises provide transportation;
Enterprises set up education funds for employees' children and provide scholarships to employees' children.
The boundary between reasonable tax avoidance and illegal tax avoidance
Reasonable tax avoidance means that taxpayers use legal means and methods to evade their tax obligations by transferring funds, expenses, costs and profits, so as to achieve a non-illegal act of evading their tax obligations. Tax avoidance is the taxpayer's successful discovery of the defects and loopholes in the existing tax law, which makes the taxpayer effectively avoid the tax obligation. Because this behavior is carried out under the premise of observing the tax law, it can reflect the extent to which the current tax law is efficient. Although tax avoidance is essentially different from tax evasion, it is also a loophole in the law. At present, there are two different views on the effectiveness of tax avoidance. One view is that tax avoidance is an "excavation" of legal loopholes. As long as the facts conform to the literal interpretation, the law is effectively used, that is, tax avoidance is not illegal; Another point of view is that tax avoidance should not only conform to the literal interpretation of the law, but also conform to the legislative intent of the law. It is necessary to judge the applicability and conformity of tax law provisions to a specific fact or behavior according to the economic or social purpose of the law or the overall content of the tax law. That is to say, although the form of an economic act is literally consistent with the legal provisions, if its consequences are contrary to the purpose of legislation, it will still not be recognized for tax purposes.
It is well known that what is reasonable may not be legal. Reasonable tax avoidance is actually making a fuss about the edge of the law. Although it seems a little far-fetched, it is hard to be picky in form from a legal point of view. In recent years, China's tax authorities have continuously held relevant tax training. Interestingly, these trainings include both tax planning training and anti-tax avoidance training. The former is aimed at enterprises and the latter is aimed at tax authorities.
In some trainings that the author was invited to attend, it was found that many corporate trainers questioned the legality of some programs. A seemingly good tax planning scheme, if carefully analyzed, has found some contradictions with the law. In the training of tax officials, many tax officials often ask because of their professional sensitivity. Many anti-tax avoidance cases they have trained are not illegal in form, but in fact they are popular planning schemes adopted by many enterprises.
For example, there is a planning scheme for purchasing and consignment business. As the consignment business is a kind of sales behavior, the consignment party needs to pay VAT. For small-scale taxpayers, in order to avoid the value-added tax, some people have designed a planning scheme, that is, by transforming the consignment party into the purchasing party, the consignment party and the seller will sign a consignment agreement into a purchasing agreement, so that the corresponding value-added tax can be avoided. Although it is a "reasonable" planning method to change the agent into the purchasing agent, many people ignore the following conditions, which makes this reasonable planning method lack legal support and eventually lose the significance of planning, namely: the trustee does not advance funds; The seller will issue the invoice to the entrusting party, and the entrusted party will forward the invoice to the entrusting party; The Consignee shall settle the payment with the Consignor according to the sales amount and VAT actually collected by the Seller, and charge a handling fee. If the above three conditions cannot be met, the conversion from consignment to purchasing will not be established. It can be seen that the difference between rationality and legality is sometimes a millimeter, and the planning method can only be considered reasonable on the basis of legality.