Sydney Taobao and other accounts have been blocked, is Weiya Li Jiaqi's "reasonable tax avoidance" risky?

Text | Radar Finance, author | Yihui Li, Editor, | Deep

When the "Double Twelve" came, the anchors of live broadcasting with goods, Sydney and Lin Shanshan, ushered in the darkest moment.

On December 12, some netizens found that the accounts of Sydney and Lin Shanshan could not be searched on Weibo. Subsequently, the two people's Weibo trumpet, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, WeChat public account, and Taobao stores were all blocked.

According to relevant information, sydney's Taobao store had 28.54 million fans before the removal, and Lin Shanshan's Taobao store also had 9.81 million fans. According to the customer service of the Taobao platform, it is "due to violations of relevant regulations, the store's goods have been removed from the shelves.".

Previously, on November 22, the Zhejiang Provincial Taxation Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation issued an announcement that Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan were recovered from taxes, charged late fees and fined 65.5531 million yuan and 27.6725 million yuan respectively for tax evasion.

Afterwards, the two issued an apology letter through Weibo, saying that they would suspend the live broadcast in the live broadcast room and carry out standardization and rectification. In the first two days, Sydney was also exposed to not paying social security to employees, and was on Weibo hot search.

Some analysts believe that Sydney and Lin Shanshan were fined high for tax evasion, which does not rule out the possibility of being included in the blacklist of live broadcasting. Without social accounts, the two lost the tools to divert traffic for the store. Now the shops that rely on survival have also been closed, and the follow-up does not rule out the slow loss of influence.

According to China News Weekly, Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi's tax approval was mainly completed on Chongming Island in Shanghai, a famous "tax depression". According to local regulations, sole proprietorships on Chongming Island no longer pay corporate income tax, and only levy personal income tax on the production and operation income obtained by individual investors.

Will Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi's "reasonable tax avoidance" be risky?

On December 9, some netizens reported that the Weibo accounts of live streaming anchors Sydney and Lin Shanshan had been blocked. At present, the search for "Sydney Cherie" and "Lin Shanshan _Sunny" on Weibo shows that the user does not exist. Including Weibo accounts that were rumored to be Sydney trumpets, they were also blocked.

Prior to this, on November 22, the duo's Weibo had been banned. On the same day, the tax department announced that the two were fined for suspected tax evasion.

In addition to "no one checked" on Weibo, Sydney's accounts on Douyin and Xiaohongshu have also been banned, and they are currently impossible to search. The official Sydney WeChat public account, which was renamed "Mrs. Qian Spoiler Agency" from "Sydney Spoiler Society", cannot be searched at present, but the WeChat Mini Program of the same name can be opened normally.

For many anchors with goods, social platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu are their main traffic entrances. After Weibo was blocked, Sydney and Lin Shanshan also lost one of the main positions for the drainage of shops.

Soon, however, Sydney and Lin Shanshan, who lost their social accounts, ushered in a greater crisis.

According to the reaction of Weibo netizens, on the evening of December 11, Sydney and Lin Shanshan changed the name of their Taobao stores, and the name of Sydney's store removed the word "Sydney" and changed it to "Mrs. Qian's custom women's clothing", Lin Shanshan's also changed her name to "Sunny Little Superman", and the two stores also set up a new pre-sale at zero o'clock on the same day.

However, on December 12, the order in the shopping cart showed that "the seller's account was wrong", and the two people's stores could not be searched, and it was suspected that they were blocked. Netizens asked Taobao customer service, and the reply was, "Due to violations of relevant regulations, the store's goods have been removed from the shelves."

For the after-sales problems of previously sold goods, Taobao customer service said that the platform will urge merchants to actively perform their contracts. If a consumer wants a refund, they can also initiate a refund request. The staff of Sydney's official fan base said that the merchant is currently in the process of punishment, so it cannot sell the goods, and it will be restored in the future.

In addition to the clothing store of the two people, Sydney's daily necessities store "Sydney Life" can not be searched, and all the goods in MumaSunny, Lin Shanshan's beauty shop, have been removed from the shelves.

On December 13, according to the "Jimu News" report, the staff of Chenfan E-commerce, the company to which the two belonged, said that for customers who have purchased store goods, they have explained through Taobao private messages that they will ship according to the scheduled delivery time on the previous order.

Before being banned, Sydney and Lin Shanshan's Taobao stores had more than 28.54 million and more than 9.81 million followers, respectively. In the recent "Double 11", on the first day of pre-sale, Sydney's live broadcast sales reached 913 million yuan, second only to Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya.

According to public reports, Sydney's Taobao store was founded in 2011, when Sydney, who was still a junior in college, and her roommate Mrs. Qian (formerly known as Qian Yufan) opened an online shop "Mrs. Qian's Home Sydney Customization".

According to the official information of Chenfan E-commerce, the company has more than 350 celebrities and covers more than 400 million fans on the whole network, of which the top ones are Sydney and Lin Shanshan. However, at present, the official website of Chenfan e-commerce cannot be opened.

In essence, live streaming with goods is a traffic business, and after a negative event, the first thing that may appear is the traffic bottleneck.

On December 10, some netizens broke the news on Weibo that Sydney's store now has no traffic, and the company has more than a thousand employees, and the monthly salary is tens of millions. Since the accident, Sydney has stopped buying insurance for employees, and many people have run to complain. In terms of employee social security, even the status of the blank.

However, Chenfan E-commerce denied it in its response, saying that the company has paid social security for all employees in accordance with the law since its establishment.

For Sydney and Lin Shanshan being blocked on multiple platforms, some live e-commerce practitioners told Radar Finance that this reflects the current "self" review, management and punishment of various platforms (jitter, fast, tao, etc.) becoming increasingly strict, and "aligning" with each other.

"The poor handling of the Sydney crisis is also an important reason for the deterioration of the situation, and the statement is perfunctory." According to the analysis of the above-mentioned people, the most anxious at present is estimated to be a bunch of suppliers involved in the Sydney incident, and how to recover the funds they have advanced is a problem.

Some analysts also believe that the two people were fined high for tax evasion, the circumstances were serious, and there was a high probability that they would be blacklisted by the online performance (live broadcast) branch of the China Performance Industry Association. Once included in the blacklist, the anchor will be prohibited from engaging in live broadcasting behavior, and it is also prohibited to register a live broadcast account.

A series of negative events in Sydney and Lin Shanshan stemmed from the previous huge tax evasion. And before the incident, it was already revealed on the Internet.

In September this year, the State Administration of Taxation coordinated the tax departments of Zhejiang, Guangxi and other places to file a case inspection of the two anchors and related enterprises in accordance with the law, and the inspection found that both anchors were suspected of false declarations and underpaid personal income tax, because the amount of tax involved was large, and the case was currently under investigation.

Suddenly, netizens have speculated about who the two tax evasion anchors will be.

On October 12, the Zhengzhou Jinshui District Taxation Bureau used big data to automatically extract data from the information system, increased the tax collection and management of employees in the field of culture and entertainment, and posthumously collected 6.6244 million yuan of tax revenue from an Internet celebrity to the national treasury.

On November 22, the answer was revealed, and Sydney and Lin Shanshan were reported for suspected tax evasion.

The State Administration of Taxation of Zhejiang Province, The Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Bureau issued a circular that the Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Department handled the case of network anchor Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan's tax evasion in accordance with the law, and proposed to impose a total fine of 65.5531 million yuan on Zhu Chenhui for recovering taxes, collecting late fees and proposing to impose a double fine of 65.5531 million yuan, and Lin Shanshan for recovering taxes, collecting late fees and proposing to impose a double fine of 27.6725 million yuan.

According to the report, Sydney and Lin Shanshan are not inadvertently guilty, but are suspected of active tax evasion.

According to the facts ascertained by the tax authorities, Zhu Chenhui converted 84.4561 million yuan of personal wages and salaries and labor remuneration obtained from relevant enterprises into the operating income of sole proprietorship enterprises by setting up multiple sole proprietorship enterprises and fictitious businesses, and stole 30.3695 million yuan of personal income tax. Lin Shanshan stole 13.1194 million yuan of personal income tax in the same way.

In addition, during the inspection of the tax authorities, it was also found that Li Zhiqiang, chief strategy officer of Chenfan E-commerce, was suspected of planning, implementing and helping Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan to evade taxes, and interfered with the investigation of the tax authorities.

At that time, Sydney and Lin Shanshan respectively issued an apology statement, saying that their awareness of the tax law was weak, they would suspend the live broadcast in the live broadcast room, standardize and rectify, and would be more compliant and pay taxes according to law.

In fact, as the new format of live streaming with goods continues to be hot, the scale of live e-commerce and the number of employees have grown rapidly, and the income of some anchors has reached millions, tens of millions or even over 100 million, and the motivation for tax avoidance has increased.

Industry insiders revealed that paying less tax by setting up a sole proprietorship is a common way to evade taxes.

According to Shi Zhengwen, director of the Finance and Taxation Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, according to the income from personal wages, salaries and labor remuneration, the highest tax rate of 45% will be applied to the part of the tax payable exceeding 960,000 yuan. Therefore, in order to evade taxes, some network anchors convert this income into corporate income in various ways, the corporate income tax rate is 25%, and there are cost deductions, and the actual tax burden is far lower than the individual tax burden.

In this case, the reason why Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan set up a sole proprietorship enterprise in Shanghai and other places was to enjoy the cost deduction discount. Tianyan's investigation showed that in the second half of the year, a number of companies under Sydney's name were cancelled, including two enterprises, the Shanghai Douzima Marketing Planning Center and the Shanghai Huangsang Marketing Planning Center, which were tax evasion incidents.

Moreover, factors such as the large number of income sources and opaque information of Internet celebrity anchors have also exacerbated the difficulty of tax inspection.

It is understood that in addition to the head anchor's endorsement fee and offline business performance, most of the anchors' income is composed of tips, pit fees, and commissions with goods.

In practice, the cooperative relationship between the anchor and the institution is different, such as cooperation in the name of the individual and the name of the studio, and the tax rate used varies according to the nature of the income. The GMV injection, balance payment rate, and return rate in a single live broadcast have made it more difficult to supervise.

On September 18, the General Office of the State Administration of Taxation issued a notice requiring further strengthening the tax management of employees in the field of culture and entertainment. According to the analysis of the outside world, the punishment of Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan has clearly released the signal of tightening tax supervision policies, which may be a shock to the live MCN company, the live broadcast platform and the anchor.

"The punishment has landed now, I didn't expect it to be these two, but I think the main question is, who else is followed?" In the view of Dong Yizhi, a lawyer at Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, the head anchor should have this risk, and the supervision of the Internet celebrity economy will become more and more stringent in the future.

In this year's Double Eleven pre-sale live broadcast, the Taobao anchor sales list showed that Li Jiaqi's sales reached 10.653 billion yuan that night; Wei Ya ranked second, with sales of 8.252 billion yuan in the live broadcast room, which was far higher than Sydney.

According to data, there are 4510 companies listed on the A-share market in 2020, and only 403 have revenues of more than 18 billion yuan. However, the total amount of goods carried by Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya this time exceeded 90% of the revenue of A-share listed companies in 2020.

A set of data that is often applied is that live broadcasts with sales of more than 10 billion yuan, even if only the minimum 20% of the sales share is taken, the commission income of the head anchor is more than 2 billion yuan. This is not to mention the income brought by the pit fee of about 50,000-80,000 yuan per brand.

According to the relevant laws and regulations on personal income tax, the annual taxable income of Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi has far exceeded the standard of the maximum 45% tax rate.

The General Office of the State Administration of Taxation said in the notice that star artists and network anchors who can take the initiative to report and correct tax-related problems before the end of 2021 can be mitigated, mitigated or exempted from punishment in accordance with law. The industry expects that before the end of the year, there will be a wave of tax reimbursement for Internet celebrity anchors.

In this context, how do the head anchors Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya operate?

According to China News Weekly, the two men's tax verification is scheduled to be completed on Shanghai's Chongming Island, a famous "tax depression." According to local regulations, sole proprietorships on Chongming Island no longer pay corporate income tax, and only levy personal income tax on the production and operation income obtained by individual investors.

The head anchor uses his personal studio to sign a service agreement with the live broadcast platform, and the platform transfers the commission to the personal studio controlled by the anchor, and applies the approved collection policy to greatly reduce the tax burden.

Specific to Chongming Island, a sole proprietorship registered in the park can apply for approval and collection, and also enjoy the tax refund policy. In the case of the taxable item as the "entertainment industry", the comprehensive tax rate after approval is 1%-7%, and the maximum is not more than 7%. Moreover, the tax rebate policy in Chongming is also the highest in Shanghai.

According to the report, the establishment of a number of sole proprietorship enterprises in the "tax depression" to avoid taxes has become an efficient tax-saving means for most Internet celebrities. Chen Shenfeng, who has been an anchor consultant, introduced, "From a single point of view, there is no problem, from the overall point of view, it is tax evasion." ”

In the new regulations of the State Administration of Taxation, it is clearly stated that individual studios and enterprises established by star artists and network anchors should be guided to establish an account system in accordance with laws and regulations, and to declare and pay taxes by means of account inspection and collection.

Tax experts have analyzed that with the tightening of supervision, the anchors' previous approved taxation is no longer allowed. This is clearly an unpopular tax policy for anchors who use shell companies for tax avoidance.

It is worth noting that Sydney and Lin Shanshan also conduct tax planning by setting up sole proprietorships in tax depressions, but they are still considered fictitious by the regulator.

In this regard, some practitioners in the financial and taxation industry told Radar Finance that the key depends on the basis of regulatory determination, whether there is non-compliance in the operation process of sole proprietorship enterprises, or whether the supervision directly carries out penetrating management, and determines that Sydney and Lin Shanshan have evaded taxes according to "substance over form". If it is the latter, it means that in the future, the anchor will avoid tax by setting up a sole proprietorship company outside the tax place, and directly face the risk of tax evasion. carry.