Du Chunli, Chief Economist of Sichuan State Taxation Bureau:
Tax management of large enterprises needs specialized teams.
It can be predicted that with the coming of "era of big enterprises" in China, the collectivization trend of tax management of big enterprises will become more obvious. In this context, tax authorities can only effectively cope with this trend by teaming up tax collection and management.
Compared with large enterprises that have generally established a relatively strong tax management team, the team-building of tax authorities to deal with large enterprises has just started, obviously lagging behind the construction of corporate tax teams, and there are some shortcomings and shortcomings. For example, the allocation of human resources is very different, and there are often dozens of tax personnel in an enterprise group, while the tax authorities are only a few people; For example, team building is extensive, teams are mostly formed to complete temporary tasks, lacking long-term goals, and are mostly established by departmental management areas, lacking cross-border cooperation; For example, the team members are mostly composed of temporarily transferred backbones, lacking a fixed division of labor, and the ability structure is single ... These shortcomings and shortcomings have seriously affected the performance of tax authorities' collection and management functions and service functions.
In order to build a large enterprise tax collection and management team that can overcome difficulties, we must consider all aspects and take many measures.
First, we should make clear the construction method of the team with the thinking of "big risk". Specifically, for the purpose of full coverage, it is to set up a large enterprise tax management team by industry, group or event, with relatively fixed team members and clearly divided division of labor among team members.
Second, we should define the goal of team work with the thinking of "great service". Study relevant tax policies, carry out in-depth interpretation of tax policies, effectively solve complex tax-related matters and complex tax-related demands of industries and groups, and accurately eliminate tax risks of special matters such as equity transfer, asset restructuring and cross-border transactions of large enterprises.
Third, we should define the working style of the team with the thinking of "great cooperation". Fully integrate the human resources in the system, break through the horizontal and vertical restrictions, strengthen the cooperation between national tax and local tax, strengthen communication with third parties, break down departmental barriers, and form an "integrated" work pattern with up-and-down interaction and left-and-right linkage.
Fourth, we should optimize the structure of team members with a "big vision" thinking. Fully integrate the superior human resources in the system, concentrate the backbone of experts in the system, and match the tax management team of large enterprises. At the same time, it is necessary to create conditions for the introduction of computer experts, engineering experts, industry experts, financial experts, economic experts, negotiation experts and legal experts outside the system, so as to realize the diversity of tax management team members of large enterprises and optimize the knowledge and ability structure of team members.
Yan Ji, Director of the Fifth Branch of Beijing State Taxation Bureau:
Merger and reorganization: the key link of management and service
George stigler, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, once pointed out that all large enterprises in developed countries have developed jointly through mergers and acquisitions. Similarly, M&A is also an important driving force for China enterprises to grow bigger and bigger, and an important means to optimize industrial structure and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. Therefore, with the coming of "era of big enterprises", China tax authorities must seize the key link of merger and reorganization of big enterprises, and provide pre-service and management.
It is worth noting that the enterprise can become bigger through merger and reorganization, but it needs the joint efforts of the enterprise and other parties to become stronger and better. Reflected in taxation, that is, enterprises should have awareness and measures to prevent and control tax risks, and tax authorities should also improve supervision and service levels to help enterprises reduce tax risks.
From the practical experience of tax risk management of large enterprises in the past, equity transfer, asset reorganization and cross-border investment involved in mergers and acquisitions of large enterprises are often the "hardest hit areas", and insufficient awareness of tax risk prevention or imperfect mechanism, ignorance or inadequate understanding of relevant tax policies at home and abroad are the "disaster causes", and the small expenditure of "pre-disaster prevention" is in sharp contrast to the large cost of "post-disaster relief".
In this regard, the tax authorities should be risk-oriented, adhere to the principle of "prevention is better than cure", move forward the management focus, improve the internal control system of enterprises, promote voluntary compliance of enterprises, change discovery control into preventive control, and change passive management into active management, so as to help China enterprises become bigger and stronger.
Specifically, the first is to help enterprises realize the pre-positioning of tax risk management, help enterprises raise tax risk prevention and control to a strategic height, and embed tax risk management activities into the whole process of each major risk event to curb the risk from the source; The second is to realize the pre-service of tax policy, make full use of "internet plus" thinking and technology, and let enterprises master the content, legislative spirit, implementation points and potential risk points of domestic and foreign tax policies related to mergers and acquisitions, so as to "have a clear idea in mind and a string in mind"; The third is to realize personalized service pre-positioning. Before major events occur, the tax authorities will negotiate with enterprises and intermediaries to determine the scope of tax policies, implementation caliber and procedures applicable to complex transactions, providing enterprises with "reassurance" and "amulet"; The fourth is to realize the pre-stage of risk management, identify and evaluate the tax risks of major issues such as equity transfer, asset restructuring and overseas investment in real time on the basis of classified management of tax risks, build a tax-related risk reminder mechanism, and urge enterprises to check and correct themselves, so as to reduce the cost of collection and management as much as possible.
Dengsheng Wang, President of China Tax Network Tax Agency:
Tax management should change with the times in the era of big enterprises.
With the continuous improvement of informatization level, the internal management of some large enterprises presents a changing trend of increasing concentration. These new changes have brought great challenges to the tax management of both tax payers and enterprises, and the tax management in the era of big enterprises should change from time to time.
At present, the most important changes in large enterprises are mainly three:
-centralized use of funds. In order to improve the efficiency of the use of funds and reduce the cost of financing, some large enterprises implement the internal banking system, and allocate the funds of subordinate enterprises in a centralized way. At a specific time every day, the funds of subordinate enterprises exceeding a certain amount are concentrated in finance companies or other institutions that undertake the functions of internal banking. Subordinate enterprises need funds and give priority to internal settlement.
-unified bidding for procurement. In order to reduce the purchasing cost, many group companies collect the purchasing right of their subordinate enterprises and concentrate on purchasing, and the right of subordinate enterprises to spend money is getting smaller and smaller.
-sales are arranged as planned. Perhaps for the sake of reducing the tax burden, or for the sake of comprehensive balance of interests, some large enterprise groups have unified arrangements for sales, profit levels and pricing standards of different links in the industrial chain within the group, and subordinate enterprises have less and less pricing power. This feature is more obvious in some domestic foreign-funded enterprises-these large enterprises have almost no autonomy in production and operation, and their functions are similar to a workshop in the global industrial chain.
From the perspective of enterprise's own tax management, these changes will bring huge potential tax risks. For example, after an enterprise establishes an "internal bank", whether the institution that undertakes the corresponding functions has a financial institution license or not, the business tax involved is quite different. If there is a financial institution license and it has the function of absorbing deposits, the funds concentrated by its subordinate enterprises are deposits for the subordinate enterprises, and the interest earned by the subordinate enterprises belongs to deposit interest and is not subject to business tax; If there is no function of absorbing deposits, the interest earned by subordinate enterprises can be considered as loan interest and should be subject to business tax.
The changes in the internal management of large enterprises have also brought challenges to the tax collection and management of tax authorities. On the one hand, the tax authorities should fully realize that the causes of tax risks of large enterprises are different from those in the past, and should use various means to timely understand these new tax risks; On the other hand, it is more and more urgent to help large enterprises prevent and control the tax risks brought about by these new changes; At the same time, more efforts should be made to improve the compliance level of large enterprises as a whole and reduce the tax loss.
Liu Xiaohong, Assistant General Manager of Finance Department of Legend Holdings Co., Ltd.:
Establish a multi-level and three-dimensional communication mechanism between tax enterprises
In recent years, with the improvement of the market economy system and the continuous innovation of business forms, the supporting tax laws and regulations have been iteratively updated. As the person in charge of taxation of Lenovo Group, the author is fortunate to experience the "structural upgrade" of the two major laws and regulations of China's mergers and acquisitions and "reform of the camp" in just one year. In this process, while actively seeking opportunities, Lenovo also responded to many challenges that followed.
At present, although State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China is considerate enough to provide timely official interpretation for important or complex new laws and regulations, it still cannot meet the ever-changing application demands of business forms in reality, especially the relatively lagging or vague parts of policies and regulations. In practice, the understanding of enterprises often conflicts with the conservative application principle of grassroots tax personnel, which leads to tax-related disputes. Take "Announcement of State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China on Several Issues Concerning Enterprise Income Tax on Indirect Transfer of Property by Non-resident Enterprises" (State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China Announcement No.7 of 20 15) as an example, the calculation method of indirect transfer income only gives the principle requirements. The way to confirm the cost of equity transfer still continues the relevant provisions in the Notice of State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China on Strengthening the Management of Enterprise Income Tax from Equity Transfer of Non-resident Enterprises (Guo Shui Han [2009] No.698). Due to the limited policy basis, all localities tend to adopt the relatively tight ruling principle in the implementation process, and some enterprises have feedback to enlarge the tax base, which leads to the uncertainty of tax burden of indirect transfer matters.
In the future, in view of this kind of time-sensitive policy applicability dispute, it is hoped that the tax authorities can make more use of the increasingly convenient Internet technology to build a multi-level and three-dimensional real-time communication and feedback mechanism among the policy-making layer, the law enforcement layer and the enterprise, and proceed from the legislative spirit and intention, through full discussion between the tax authorities and the enterprise, reduce the misunderstanding of the application of specific provisions of the tax law by the law enforcement layer and the enterprise, and regularly release the typical and universal misunderstood provisions in the form of cases as a supplement to the interpretation of laws and regulations. At the same time, as far as possible, administrative reconsideration should be replaced by benign communication in advance, thus reducing tax-related disputes and improving corporate tax compliance.
At the same time, it is suggested that the tax authorities can build an institutionalized exchange platform between large enterprises, so as to facilitate the exchange of tax management experience between large enterprises, discuss tax-related issues and learn from each other's solutions to complex tax matters.