Wei Ya was fined 1.3 billion yuan, which sounded the alarm bell: the anchor industry's "lucky tax evasion" will not work

Reporter | She Xiaochen

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On December 20, a message made the live broadcast sister "Wei Ya" bid farewell to the live broadcast room.

After Sydney, another anchor fell into the "tax inspection" storm. According to Xinhua News Agency, the Inspection Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Bureau in Zhejiang Province found that between 2019 and 2020, network anchor Huang Wei (screen name: Wei Ya) evaded taxes of 643 million yuan and other underpayment of taxes by concealing personal income, fictitious business to convert the nature of income and false declarations, and other underpaid taxes of 600 million yuan, and made a tax administrative treatment penalty decision against Huang Wei in accordance with the law, recovering taxes, collecting late fees and imposing fines totaling 1.341 billion yuan.

After the news was announced, Wei Ya's related content quickly appeared on Weibo's hot search. Wei Ya and her husband Dong Haifeng respectively issued apology letters on Weibo, Dong Haifeng said, "In recent years, with the rapid development of the live e-commerce industry, I know that I am not professional in taxation, and I have hired a third-party agency to carry out tax coordination, and then found that there are problems in such tax coordination and discontinued." Since November 2020, weiya-related taxes have been paid in full at the 45% personal income tax rate, and previously non-compliant taxes have been paid voluntarily. ”

At the same time, the Taobao live broadcast platform that Wei Ya relies on has also reacted quickly: Wei Ya's Taobao live broadcast preview originally scheduled for 7 pm on December 20 has been cancelled, and the Taobao "New Year Festival" live broadcast at 6:30 pm on December 21 has also been cancelled. As of press time, Wei Ya's Weibo, Taobao, and Douyin accounts have been banned.

The reason why it has aroused so much attention is that the high income revealed by Via's tax audit is staggering; on the other hand, the problem of network anchors' tax audits has received great attention before Via. Not long ago, the Inspection Bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Bureau issued a tax administrative decision to Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan in accordance with the law, and the anchors "Sydney" (Zhu Chenhui) and Lin Shanshan, two network anchors, were suspected of tax evasion and were fined a total of nearly 100 million yuan.

On the Taobao live broadcast platform, Wei Ya and Sydney are the top three anchors, which are the top in the industry. In the first pre-sale live broadcast of Double 11 this year, Li Jiaqi's sales reached 10.653 billion yuan, Wei Ya's sales reached 8.252 billion yuan, and the sales of the third place Sydney pear was 930 million yuan. The tax inspection storm of the two head anchors has made the live broadcast industry with unlimited scenery "fall off the altar", behind which is a profound reminder to the industry.

Set up a number of sole proprietorships to conceal personal income

How did Via steal so much of her taxes? In short, by forming multiple companies, Via converts her personal income into business income, thereby reducing the amount of tax paid.

Specifically, the above-mentioned "false declaration of the nature of income by concealing personal income and fictitious business conversion" refers to the following acts: between 2019 and 2020, Huang Wei evaded taxes by concealing the commission income obtained from the live broadcast platform; through the establishment of Shanghai Weihe Enterprise Management Consulting Center, Shanghai Dusu Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership and other fictitious businesses, the commission obtained by her personal participation in live streaming, Income from labor remuneration such as pit fees is converted into business income of enterprises for false declaration and tax evasion; income obtained from engaging in other production and business activities is not declared and paid in accordance with law.

In accordance with the Provisions of the Individual Income Tax Law of the People's Republic of China and the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Administration of Tax Collection, the Inspection Bureau of the Taxation Bureau of Hangzhou Municipality, Zhejiang Province, confirmed in accordance with the law that it had evaded taxes of 643 million yuan and other underpaid taxes by 0.6 billion yuan.

Different taxpayers and different taxes point to different amounts of tax, which is the premise that Via can evade taxes. According to the provisions of the current Individual Income Tax Law, after the anchor obtains income, the excess progressive tax rate of 3%-45% is applied according to the income from wages and salaries and the income from labor remuneration; however, according to the current tax law, the sole proprietorship enterprise is levied personal income tax according to the business income, and the excess progressive tax rate of 5% to 35% is applied.

Zhao Xiaobo, a lawyer at Shanghai Xinghan Law Firm, pointed out that one of the reasons why the anchor chose to set up a sole proprietorship and needed to set up multiple sole proprietorships was that the sole proprietorship did not need to pay 25% corporate income tax. In addition, the tax rate applicable to the establishment of a sole proprietorship with small-scale taxpayers will be reduced.

In Sydney's case, the approach was also to transform individual wages and remuneration for services. According to the investigation results, between 2019 and 2020, Zhu Chenhui and Lin Shanshan set up sole proprietorship enterprises in Shanghai, Guangxi, Jiangxi and other places, fictitiously converted the income from their personal wages, salaries and labor remuneration into the operating income of the sole proprietorship enterprise, and stole personal income tax.

In actual cases, the income obtained by anchors with goods includes pit fees and commission income; if it is an entertainment anchor, the income also includes tips. The pit fee of the head anchor with goods is often hundreds of thousands of dollars, and many brands have told interface news that the live broadcast room of the head anchor is almost a "money-losing business". And it is precisely because of these many sources and high price income that the anchor has a fluke when paying taxes.

The live broadcast of a sister stopped broadcasting, and the alarm bell of the industry sounded

On the afternoon of December 20, a screenshot circulating on the Internet showed that in the information notification group of the Weiya Business Department of Qianxun Holdings, Weiya agent Wang Si (Gu Mo) said, "Next, please go home and rest first, and during this period the salary will be paid." ”

According to interface news, the company that has risen due to Via's live broadcast with goods has continuously expanded its manpower scale in the past two years, according to the salary statistics of Kanzhuan Network, the average monthly income of employees of Qianxun Company is 17,000, of which 36% of employees are higher than the average salary, higher than that of companies in the same industry. Nowadays, everything is pressed the pause button.

After the penalty was announced, Wei Ya's Taobao live broadcast has been cancelled, and the recovery time is unknown. After that, WeiYa's Weibo, Taobao, and Douyin accounts were also banned one after another.

Regarding whether to pursue huang wei for criminal responsibility, the relevant person in charge of the inspection bureau of the Hangzhou Municipal Taxation Bureau replied: Huang Wei was first punished by the tax authorities for tax evasion and had not previously received criminal punishment for evading the payment of taxes, if she can pay the taxes, late fees and fines within the prescribed time limit, she will not be investigated for criminal liability according to law; if she fails to pay the taxes, late fees and fines within the prescribed time limit, the tax authorities will transfer them to the public security organs for handling according to law.

However, this time Weiya's tax investigation storm has sounded a wake-up call for the entire anchor industry and live broadcast platforms.

After the announcement of the Weiya tax inspection incident, the Economic Daily published an article saying that in recent years, the tax department has strengthened the tax supervision of high-income people and high-risk industries. In view of the new methods of tax evasion, we will continue to improve the ability of accurate supervision, increase the intensity of "double random, one open" spot checks, strictly investigate and expose all kinds of malicious tax evasion, and continue to purify the tax business environment. It can be seen from a series of cases that the analysis of tax big data has shown its power, and through the "Internet + supervision" to achieve accurate and effective crackdown, so that tax evasion can not escape"

In fact, since the beginning of this year, the live broadcasting industry has bid farewell to the "barbaric growth period", and supervision at all levels has been continuously strengthened. In September this year, the State Administration of Taxation issued a special notice clarifying that if network anchors can take the initiative to report and correct tax-related problems in a timely manner before the end of 2021, they can be mitigated, mitigated or exempted from punishment in accordance with law. According to Xinhua News Agency, thousands of people have taken the initiative to check and pay back taxes.

Xia Hailong, a lawyer at Shanghai Shenlun Law Firm, has long been concerned about the laws and regulations of the Internet industry, and he believes that the main reason why the personal taxation of anchors has become a prominent problem is that the number of anchors is very large, which poses a greater challenge to tax supervision; secondly, there are more ways for individual anchors to earn, which requires tax units to invest more time in investigating the source and destination of funds, which is a challenge on "quantity".

Industry experts told Interface News that live broadcasting enterprises and anchors with goods, as the main body of the market, should not only pursue benefits, but also pursue social benefits, under the constraints of industry norms, the business of live broadcasting enterprises and anchors with goods will also mature. Bai Yanfeng, dean of the School of Finance and Taxation of the Central University of Finance and Economics, proposed that it is necessary to implement hierarchical and classified management of network platforms, brokerage companies, and network anchors, establish an industry "blacklist" system, and adopt industry boycott or restrict disciplinary measures for network anchors who have illegal and immoral behaviors such as tax evasion.

Judging from the current supervision, after this incident, anchors and institutions must be more "strict" on their own requirements. Xia Hailong believes that after the strengthening of supervision, e-commerce platforms will also be greatly affected, and in various aspects such as profit accounting and business strategies, platforms must rethink.