Kai pineapple finance (kaiboluocaijing) original
Author | Golden Dragon
Edit | Wei Jia
"I heard that the head anchor is being strictly investigated."
A few days ago, the news of "Zhengzhou chasing more than 6 million taxes from an Internet celebrity" came out, public opinion was in an uproar, and a merchant who had cooperated with the anchor with the goods revealed the news to Kai Pineapple Finance.
According to the "Zhengzhou Evening News", a few days ago, 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. Of the 6,624,400 yuan, including 6,346,600 yuan of supplementary taxes and 277,800 yuan of late fees. At present, the taxpayer has settled the tax in 15 installments.
After the State Administration of Taxation asked local tax authorities to increase the tax inspection of Internet celebrities and celebrities, this is the first case of Internet celebrities to publicly supplement taxes. The word "internet celebrity" is naturally eye-catching, coupled with the huge tax, the topic quickly appeared on Weibo hot search.
Ordinary people are curious, who is this Internet celebrity who has been charged more than 6 million yuan in taxes? Influencers can make so much money, how does this group pay taxes? What are the usual ways of tax avoidance and evasion?
As for the anchor group, a Zhengzhou internet celebrity has been taxed, others have heard the wind, and they are discussing, "Zhengzhou tax inspection incident" is a case of Internet celebrity tax reimbursement, or is the prelude to the network anchor's "tax compensation storm", what impact will it have on the Internet celebrity anchor group?
Kai Pineapple Finance has tried to answer these questions through exchanges with many industry insiders.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" How do > influencers pay taxes? </h1>
"I paid more than 6 million yuan in taxes alone, which is how much money I made!" "I can't make 6.62 million yuan in my life, and this is just a tax payment for an influencer."
Under the hot search topic of "Zhengzhou collects more than 6 million taxes from an Internet celebrity", netizens are most curious about the question of how much money can be earned when an Internet celebrity, and they have calculated their income according to the amount of tax.
Weibo voting
In fact, according to the type of income, there are anchors with goods who earn pit fees and commission income by carrying goods, there are show anchors who take tip income, and there are content anchors who earn soft advertising implants. However, no matter what way the anchor makes money, if he pays tax according to the income of personal wages and salaries and labor remuneration, the part after the income exceeds 960,000 yuan will be subject to the maximum marginal tax rate of 45%.
Combined with the "Zhengzhou Daily" report mentioned, "in the routine monitoring of the remittance of tax arrears data through the 'Natural Persons Electronic Taxation Bureau' platform, the second share of the tax administration of the bureau inquired in the system that there was a large amount of tax arrears in the Wenhua Road Taxation Sub-bureau that was settled and paid in 2020. It is not difficult to judge that the tax of 6.62 million yuan of this Internet celebrity anchor corresponds to at least more than 10 million personal annual income.
Many industry insiders judged that this is most likely the anchor of a platform relative to the head. Zhao Qi, a head of FMCG brands, told Kai Pineapple Finance that it is not a "anchor with goods" as the market speculates, and the internet celebrity is more likely to be the anchor of the show.
Zhao Qi combined the anchor's income volume and regional speculation, "Ordinary anchors with goods can't make so much money, and high-income anchors with goods are basically concentrated in Hangzhou and Shanghai." This Internet celebrity is in Zhengzhou, and Zhengzhou really does not have such an order of magnitude of anchors with goods. If it is a show anchor, it is not unusual for the income to reach this order of magnitude. ”
How to tax Internet celebrity anchors with such high incomes is also a topic of concern for netizens.
How to pay taxes is determined by the partnership between the anchor and the platform. Lawyer Li Sheng of Beijing Zhipu Law Firm said that if the anchor works on the platform as an individual and independently, there is a labor relationship with the platform, and the platform should withhold and pay according to the labor remuneration at this time. If the anchor signs a labor agreement and conducts the live broadcast as an employee, the individual tax is withheld according to the income from labor remuneration.
However, high-income anchors basically do tax planning.
The head of the internet celebrity anchor and the star belong to the same high-income group, the income is often millions, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, it is easy to apply the highest 45% tax rate, that is, 100 yuan income means to pay 45 yuan of tax. Li Sheng said that high-income anchors will obviously avoid the way of paying taxes under the employment relationship, and choose another cooperative relationship with the platform - to set up studios in the form of sole proprietorships, partnerships, individual industrial and commercial households, etc.
Under this operation, the personal income tax paid according to business income is only subject to the maximum tax rate of 35%, which is 10 percentage points less. Coupled with the approved levy adopted by some places for the studio, a very low tax rate is given according to gross income, and the actual tax burden will be lower. However, he stressed that from the perspective of the tax law, it is personal income that is taxed according to personal income, and the income of the company should be taxed according to the income of the company, and the main body of income cannot be deliberately converted to evade tax obligations.
According to Zang Jianwen, a doctor of finance and lecturer at Hebei University of Finance, the high-income anchor group evades taxes in order to change the nature of income, turn employment income into business income, and turn labor contracts into labor cooperation forms. Therefore, the establishment of sole proprietorship enterprises and the establishment of companies in tax depression parks in combination with local policies to avoid taxes are already the routine operations of high-income groups such as anchors. "It is true that some industrial parks and local governments return part, part or full amount of personal income tax to the payers in order to attract investment and investment."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="30" > how do all kinds of Internet celebrities avoid taxes and evade taxes? </h1>
During the fermentation of the "Zhengzhou net red" incident, a "tax avoidance plan" circulated on the Internet, saying that if the internet celebrity adopted the "tax avoidance plan", its tax payment ratio may be lower, and the actual income will be correspondingly higher.
Indeed, because of the particularity of the industry, anchors also have some "unspoken rules" of tax avoidance and even tax evasion. We analyze from three types: game anchor, show streamer, and anchor with goods.
Zhao Qi has been deeply involved in the operation of a game live broadcasting platform. He revealed that at that time, game streamers on the platform had at least three ways to evade taxes.
The first way is the "yin-yang contract". On the surface, the platform signs a relatively low-salary contract with the anchor, but the majority of the salary is settled in cash.
The second way is to let the anchor find a company by himself, and the platform cooperates with this company to convey benefits in the name of business transactions.
The third way is to let the anchor register as an individual industrial and commercial household (a natural person or family that has been approved and registered according to law and engages in industrial and commercial business activities), and the platform settles with the anchor in the name of purchasing services or other projects, and the anchor has a low tax rate; or, let the anchor find an invoice by himself, and the platform reimburses the anchor as an employee.
"The game anchors of our platform earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, and when the platform pays salaries to the anchors, it uses this kind of operation to help the anchors avoid taxes." Zhao Qi recalled that in 2016, when game live broadcasting was at the cusp, this kind of operation was particularly common. At that time, capital was crazy into the game, and the game live broadcasting platform had to open a large price to rob people in order to grab the scarce game anchors.
Zhao Qi's platform, the game anchor only has a reward of 20,000 or 30,000 yuan a month, this income can not retain people at all, the platform will basically give the head anchor hundreds of thousands of monthly salaries, "but these anchors are not willing to pay taxes, think that this tax should not be out of them." Finally, the result of the game between anchors and platforms was to help them avoid taxes in the above way, "which later evolved into unwritten rules in the game live broadcasting circle."
In the show live broadcast mode, the main income of the anchor comes from tips, while the tip transaction is platform-based, and the space for tax avoidance is small.
Source / Pexels
Zhao Qi analyzed that on the one hand, the scarcity of show anchors is not as good as that of game anchors, on the other hand, shows are a more mature business model, and the platform usually does not give high salaries to head anchors, generally giving support to traffic.
There are exceptions to everything, and he also mentioned that in the camp of show anchors, when the bargaining power of the anchor is strong enough, he will also take the road of the game anchor, and the platform does not take the initiative to help, but may acquiesce to some tax evasion.
Many industry insiders agree that in the anchor circle, the tax avoidance space for anchors with goods is the smallest.
The methods of "yin and yang contract" and "cash settlement" are not applicable to anchors with goods. Zhao Qi mentioned that mobile payment can be traced, both parties are real names, and cash has anonymity, which involves the issue of trust in actual operation.
Because the cargo industry is concentrated in Hangzhou and Shanghai, but the vast majority of manufacturers are not here, coupled with the rise of live streaming goods is not long, resulting in insufficient trust between the upstream and downstream, so there is no way to carry out cash transactions.
However, the way to register a store in the name of an individual industrial and commercial household is feasible for anchors with goods, and some platforms are also encouraged. "If you use company registration, the VAT rate is 13%, and if you register with a self-employed person, you can enjoy the policy of individual business income tax approval, and the tax rate can be reduced by 10 points." Now a large number of stores on Douyin are registered in the name of self-employed households. Zhao Qi said that self-employed people do not have to pay so much tax to compensate this part of the cost to the anchor, which is the way the platform helps both the merchant and the anchor to make money.
Overall, the transactions of e-commerce anchors occur on e-commerce and live broadcast platforms, and the data is open and checkable, relatively transparent, and it is difficult to evade taxes.
Wang Ran, founder of the live shopping APP Pineapple, mentioned that the head anchor has the ability to talk about the supply chain and is not so dependent on the platform, but the vast majority of small and medium-sized anchors rely on the platform, and the selection and transaction occur on the platform, so the possibility of tax evasion is small. However, some small anchors will hang up links to some non-platform products to sell, "these goods come from an unknown source, it is difficult to say." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="51" > anchors dare to "blow" GMV later? </h1>
Is the "Zhengzhou tax inspection incident" a case of Internet celebrities' tax reimbursement, or is it a prelude to an Internet celebrity's "tax reimbursement storm"?
On September 18, the State Administration of Taxation issued the "Notice on Carrying out Comprehensive Governance in the Field of Culture and Entertainment", which will soon be combined with the settlement and payment of individual income tax in 2020 to carry out one-on-one risk tips and supervision and rectification for star artists and network anchors with tax-related risks.
On September 28, the State Administration of Taxation said that the tax department found that two anchors with goods were suspected of illegally converting personal income into business income, making false declarations and paying less personal income tax, and the amount of tax involved was large, which had been filed and investigated.
The crazy and fast running live e-commerce industry and high-income head anchors will inevitably become the focus of tax inspections. According to iResearch research reports, in 2020, the scale of China's live e-commerce market will exceed 1.2 trillion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 197.0%, and it is expected that the average annual compound growth rate in the next three years will be 58.3%, and the scale of live e-commerce is expected to exceed 4.9 trillion yuan in 2023. By the end of 2020, the number of anchors in the industry reached 1.234 million. The above-mentioned industry insiders revealed that on various platforms, anchors with annual income of more than one million, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people are at least a few thousand.
More than one industry insider told Kai Pineapple Finance that the income level of anchors with goods, especially the head with goods, is relatively easy to estimate, and provides a calculation method. The income of anchors with goods mainly includes two parts: pit fee and commission.
Source / Visual China
First calculate the pit fee part. Taking Via as an example, about 300 days a year, there are about 300 days of broadcasting, there are 40-50 pits a night, according to 30 pit charges, the average pit fee of 100,000 yuan, Wei Ya has a day of pit fee of 3 million, 300 days is 90 million.
Recalculate the commission portion. Zhao Qi revealed that the commissions of different categories are different, generally between 10% and 35%. In the field of consumption, the commission of general alcoholic beverages is the highest, the commission of 3C electrical appliances is the lowest, the more transparent the price of the product, the lower the commission ratio; the commission is also related to the size of the brand, the big brand generally gives 5%-10% commission, and the small brand is willing to give a higher commission. The total sales of Via Live In 2020 is 31 billion yuan, and its commission income is about 620 million yuan according to the average commission of 20%. "Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, anchors of this magnitude, the refund part in the GMV has been very small, and the refund after the live broadcast on the spot has nothing to do with the anchor, and does not affect its commission income." Zhao Qi added.
Qu Jiang, the head of an e-commerce platform, analyzed the pineapple finance and economics, and Wei Ya's personal income should be around 1 billion yuan. Of course, this money does not include Wei Ya's Weibo, WeChat advertising revenue, and the money earned by humble other celebrities and talents.
Having said that, Qu Jiang believes that the super anchors such as Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, whether it is the United States ONE or Qianxun, have been capitalized and operated, and the cost of tax evasion is too high, and the probability will not be self-destructive.
"Hidden dangers are likely to occur in some mid-waist anchors and small anchors operating in the industry, and whether their finances are compliant should be marked with a question mark." Qu Jiang said that under the premise that the State Administration of Taxation has indicated that "if you can take the initiative to report and correct tax-related problems in a timely manner before the end of 2021, you can be lightened, mitigated or exempted from punishment according to law", and the anchors with goods may have large-scale tax reimbursement scenes in 2016.
With the intensification of the reform of the tax collection and management system and the upgrading of the technical collection and management methods of the tax department, the tax supervision for the anchor group will also be upgraded, and the loopholes that the anchors can drill will become smaller and smaller or even disappear. Zang Jianwen also mentioned to Kai Pineapple Finance that the anchor is more convenient for the tax department to collect because of the particularity of its online transactions; when the head anchor group becomes the key object of tax inspection, it will also curb the wind of "brushing performance", "bragging also has to pay taxes", to some extent, it will also curb the atmosphere of blindly exaggerating GMV.
Wang Ran said that the development of the anchor industry, just like the development of the Internet industry in that year, live broadcasting will be standardized from the initial personal site to the official site of the enterprise. Tax inspection will make the entire anchor ecology tend to develop benignly.
*Image from Pexels. At the request of the interviewees, Zhao Qi and Qu Jiang are pseudonyms in the text.