When it comes to the "Golden Tax Four", it can be said that it is a hot topic in the field of finance and taxation. At the third "Belt and Road" Tax Collection and Management Cooperation Forum in 2022, Wang Jun, Director of the State Administration of Taxation, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Promoting the Spirit of the Silk Road and Promoting Capacity Building" at the opening ceremony, and proposed that China's taxation department will continue to deepen cooperation. The three initiatives of mechanism construction, continuous improvement of shared platform construction, and continuous promotion of smart taxation construction, also revealed the latest trends of the fourth phase of Golden Tax. At a press conference held by the Information Office of the State Council on April 6, 2023, the State Administration of Taxation said that it would continue to keep a close eye on false tax fraud, jointly promote a severe crackdown, and continue to crack down on it.

In view of this, this paper will briefly comb the development course of the Golden Tax Project, combined with the operational characteristics of the four phases of the Golden Tax, a brief analysis of the common tax compliance risks of enterprises in the context of the four phases of the Golden Tax, and combined with the author's consulting experience to talk about the way to break the situation.

1.The Development Course of Golden Tax Project

The Golden Tax Project is one of the country's twelve gold projects. It originated from the document "Guiding Opinions of the National Informatization Leading Group on my country's E-government Construction" on August 5, 2002 [Zhongban Fa No. 17]. The Golden Tax Project is called China Tax Administration Information System (CTAIS), and it is also one of the core systems of e-government in China. The system consists of a network and four subsystems. One network is a unified computer backbone network from the State Administration of Taxation to the provinces, cities and counties. The four subsystems refer to the VAT anti-counterfeiting tax control invoicing subsystem, anti-counterfeiting tax control authentication system, VAT cross-audit subsystem and invoice assistance subsystem covering the whole country.

As early as 1997, the State Administration of Taxation and China's Shenzhou Information Enterprise jointly developed and launched the "Golden Tax Phase I", and took the lead in proposing and establishing an income tax cross-inspection system, and at the same time introducing a value-added tax anti-counterfeiting tax control system. By 1998, the "Golden Tax Phase II" project was still committed to improving it.VAT anti-counterfeiting tax-controlled invoice issuing sub-system, invoice issuing subscriber sub-system, VAT computer inspection sub-systemand invoice issuing collaborative investigation subsystem. By 2001, the State Administration of Taxation had mapped the blueprint for the improvement and integration of the digital intelligence system of national tax collection management and the "Golden Tax Phase III" project, realizing that on the basis of the "Golden Tax Phase II", the previous method of collecting data manually recorded by the tax authorities through the staff was changed to issuing invoices through the anti-counterfeiting tax control invoicing management system, and the invoicing was verified through the anti-counterfeiting tax control verification subsystem, the tax authorities will be able to use the verification subsystem to find problematic invoices and to organize, monitor and manage the investigation. In 2017, the "Golden Tax Phase III" realized the interconnection of all domestic tax authorities. The entire tax supervision system has four subsystems: internal collection system, administrative management, external information management, and decision support.

2.The operating characteristics of the fourth phase of the Golden Tax.

So far, the Golden Tax Project has undergone the evolution of the first, second, third and fourth phases, gradually realizing the development stage from "controlling tax by votes" to "governing tax by numbers. Compared with the past, the fourth phase of Golden Tax has increased non-tax control, and non-tax items such as social security, cultural construction fees, garbage disposal fees, and land use right transfer fees have been included in the management of tax authorities, so as to achieve corporate tax business and non-tax Comprehensive monitoring of business.Establish an information sharing mechanism to network the information of participating institutions such as national ministries and commissions, the People's Bank of China, and commercial banks. At the same time, the identity information and tax status of relevant personnel of various enterprises will also be included in the interconnection, information verification channels will be opened, and cloud technology will be used to establish smart taxation with full data, full business and full process of taxes and fees.

Generally speaking, after the fourth phase of the Golden Tax is launched, the tax authorities can understand taxpayers through large numbers. For example, when a natural person fills in special additional deductions such as children's education, support for the elderly, and housing rental during the process of personal income tax settlement and payment declaration, the tax authorities will grasp the information related to this. When taxpayers across the country are actively filing tax returns, the tax authorities will be able to grasp the taxpayer's more comprehensive personal network and judge the accuracy of the information. In addition, Golden Tax IV can also judge the relationship between the two companies by the degree of employee overlap, equity relationships, and dependence on customers or suppliers. Based on "Internet regulation", "credit risk", and integrating big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, the Golden Tax Phase IV may know you better than you think.

Common tax compliance risks of enterprises under the background of the fourth phase of 3. gold tax.

Under the background of the fourth phase of Golden Tax, the crime of endangering tax collection and administration in Section 6 of the Criminal Law is still the red line of enterprise tax compliance management from Article 201 to Article 211, but due to the substantial improvement of tax inspection methods and technology, the more hidden practices in the past are also more easily exposed to supervision. The author used the Weike Advance Legal Database to search tax-related criminal cases in 2022. Taking January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022 as the time dimension, there were 1049 crimes involving endangering tax collection and administration nationwide, of which 858 were crimes of falsely issuing special VAT invoices, fraudulently obtaining export tax rebates and deducting tax invoices, accounting for 81.79. However, it should be noted that the investigation and trial cycle of criminal cases is relatively long. Many cases to be tried in 2022 actually occurred in 2021 or even earlier, but they can still bring many risk tips to enterprises. At the same time, with the continuous development of compliance and non-prosecution of enterprises involved in the case, some enterprises involved in tax crimes, due to compliance rectification, after evaluation and acceptance, the procuratorate made a relatively non-prosecution decision. In the vast majority of tax-related penalties and tax-related criminal cases, many companies are involved because they have been investigated backwards. This further reminds business owners to pay attention to tax-related risks, because even if they can escape the fourth phase of the golden tax, There will be five and six phases of the golden tax in the future, and the hidden dangers of administrative and even criminal risks cannot be buried due to temporary "savings. The author summarizes the following common tax-related non-compliance behaviors:

(I) non-compliant invoicing involves administrative, criminal risks

In the consultation accepted by the author, many business owners consulted the legal channels of "public to private", and the answer was that the essence of "public to private" was false invoicing, and there was no legal channel. Some enterprises earn illegal handling fees by making false invoices. Correspondingly, enterprises that have obtained false invoices can deduct the input tax amount, so as to achieve the purpose of deducting the input tax amount of value-added tax and reducing the enterprise income tax by increasing costs and reducing profits. False invoicing behavior has always been a regular crackdown by tax authorities. Business owners who falsely issue invoices will not only bear administrative responsibility, but also bear criminal responsibility when they reach certain standards. The second paragraph of Article 22 of the Measures for the Administration of the People's Republic of China Invoices stipulates that no unit or individual shall engage in the following acts of false invoicing: (1) issuing invoices for others or for themselves that are inconsistent with the actual business situation; (II) asking others to issue invoices for themselves that are inconsistent with the actual business situation; (III) introducing others to issue invoices that are inconsistent with the actual business situation. Article 56 of the (II) Provisions of the Ministry of Public Security of the Supreme People's Procuratorate on the Standards for Prosecution of Criminal Cases under the Jurisdiction of Public Security Organs, falsely issue special VAT invoices or falsely issue other invoices used to defraud export tax rebates or offset taxes, if the amount of tax falsely issued is more than 100,000 yuan or the amount of tax losses caused by the state is more than 50,000 yuan, the case shall be filed for prosecution. Article 57, falsely issued invoices other than those stipulated in Article 205 of the Criminal Law shall be filed for prosecution under any of the following circumstances: (1) the total amount of falsely issued invoices is more than 500,000 yuan; (II) more than 100 falsely issued invoices with a face value of more than 300,000 yuan; (III) within five years, he has been subject to criminal punishment or administrative punishment for falsely issuing invoices twice or more, and the amount has reached the first and second standard 60%.

In the past tax inspection process, the "invoice flow", "goods (labor) flow" and "capital flow" of enterprises were mainly analyzed, and the authenticity of tax-related business of enterprises was judged by checking whether the three flows were consistent. However, with the gradual promotion of electronic invoice, the change of delivery mode of goods (labor) flow and the complex and changeable capital flow brought about by the rise of third-party payment institutions, the fourth phase of the Golden Tax will focus on monitoring abnormal enterprises by establishing a "portrait" of enterprises, establishing positive and negative sample models, and setting up risk characteristic standards.

(II) non-compliant profit sharing involves multiple risks

The same is the division of profits from the enterprise, the non-compliant method not only leads to the relevant shareholders involved in tax risks, but also implicated in legal proceedings. In a lawsuit involving the withdrawal of capital contributions by shareholders that the author once participated in, the shareholders of the company borrowed more than 300 million yuan from the company in the form of interest-free loans, which were later recovered by the company. In the tax cases consulted in the past, a boss borrowed 10 million yuan from the company from 2021 and did not return it for more than a year. The tax bureau recovered 2 million yuan and late fees from him. The tax and late fees were paid by individual shareholders and withheld by the company. In fact, shareholder borrowing is the IRS's favorite and easiest area to tax. Since 2016, the Inland Revenue Department has collected a large number of personal income taxes on shareholder loans. At the tax level, once a shareholder borrows money for more than a year and has not been repaid, it is considered a dividend distribution, and a 20% personal income tax is levied on the dividends received by shareholders. The clause based on is the "Notice on Regulating the Administration of Individual Income Tax Collection for Individual Investors" (Caishui (2003) No. 158), which is well known in the industry. At the same time, at the level of corporate law, shareholders may therefore be found to be abusing the independent status of corporate legal persons and the limited liability of shareholders, fabricating claims and debts, evading debts or withdrawing funds; at the level of criminal law, they may also be suspected of criminal liability such as the crime of misappropriation of funds or the crime of withdrawing capital contributions. Information on shareholder borrowings is fully reflected in the balance sheet, and once they are recovered, shareholders will not only have to pay personal income tax but also pay a late fee of five ten thousandths of a day. After the launch of the fourth phase of the Golden Tax, comprehensive supervision will be carried out in combination with large payment transactions and suspicious payment transactions of legal persons, other organizations, individual industrial and commercial households and individuals, and the method of sharing corporate profits in a non-compliant manner will be monitored and recovered in a timely manner.

(III) non-compliance declarations are included in the risk of exception list.

Enterprises operate without approval, fail to fill in the annual report and annual report information on time, and the virtual registered business address will be included in the list of abnormal operations. If there is no rectification within the time limit, it will also be included in the industrial and commercial blacklist and tax blacklist, which not only affects the normal business development of the enterprise, but also affects the normal credit rating of the enterprise.

The author has received an entrepreneur before. When he wanted to set up a company again, he found that his name had appeared in the blacklist of the tax system and came to consult the solution. After communication, it is found that the previously registered company has never declared and paid taxes on schedule due to perennial losses. According to Article 62 of the the People's Republic of China Tax Collection and Administration Law, if the taxpayer fails to file tax returns and submit tax information within the prescribed time limit, or if the withholding agent fails to submit the tax withholding and collection report form and relevant information to the tax authority within the prescribed time limit, the tax authority shall order it to make corrections within a time limit, A fine of not more than 2,000 yuan may be imposed; if the circumstances are serious, a fine of not less than 2,000 yuan but not more than 10,000 yuan may be imposed. For taxpayers who declare monthly or quarterly, it is illegal to declare once less, that is, 12 times a year. A few years have already constituted a serious standard and are directly blacklisted.

There are still many tax-related risks faced by enterprises, which are limited to space reasons.

4. the way to break the game

In essence, any departure from the actual operation of the underlying logic of the enterprise to talk about tax risk avoidance methods are temporary and difficult to cure, in the reference to the norms of tax these old framework content, the author may wish to start from the following three points to talk about the idea of breaking the situation.

(I) abandon wrong ideas and establish correct cognition

The tax risks of many enterprises are often caused by wrong ideas first. Due to the lack of tax knowledge, the boss still has a fluke mentality under the fourth phase of the golden tax, which leads to many wrong misunderstandings. For example, some bosses may think that some tax treatments follow past practices and therefore are not risky, or do not recognize that such behavior poses risks. For example, in 2018, Fan Bingbing was investigated for tax evasion, and the final tax payment and fine reached 0.884 billion yuan, which resulted in the largest personal fine in the history of our country. In the same year, stars from all walks of life paid about 11.8 billion yuan's personal income tax before the end of the year. On September 18, 2021, the General Office of the State Administration of Taxation issued a notice on ''Strengthening the Tax Management of Employees in the Cultural and Entertainment Fields''. The notice requires that the daily tax management of employees in the cultural and entertainment field be further strengthened, and the personal studios and enterprises established by star artists and network anchors, To guide the establishment of an account system in accordance with laws and regulations. And those who can take the initiative to report and correct tax-related problems in a timely manner before the end of 2021 can be given a lighter, mitigated or exempted from punishment in accordance with the law. Compared with the notice on further standardizing the tax order of the film and television industry issued by the tax authorities in October 2018, the above-mentioned policies are greatly tightened compared with the policy of exemption from administrative punishment and no fine for film and television enterprises and employees who seriously check and correct themselves and voluntarily pay taxes before the end of December 2018. Stars and Internet celebrities set up shell companies in Horgos to enjoy tax benefits according to past experience, split contracts to evade individual taxes, change the nature of personal income in the name of enterprise income, and evade taxes by false "capital increase". These means are checked one by one with the development of tax inspection operations.

Similar misconceptions include "if found, it depends on finding a relationship to settle" and "no tax is required without invoicing", which are not discussed due to space constraints. It can be seen that in the field of avoiding tax risks, correct thinking and establishing correct cognition is the first step to be stable and far-reaching.

(II) familiar with the tax collection and management laws, to avoid paying more "unjust tax"

Tax law is often jokingly called "broken law" in the industry. Every year, the state and local governments will issue more than 4000 financial policies. As a private business owner, it is difficult to have the energy to understand the complex tax policies clearly and apply them skillfully. In this case, starting with the "the People's Republic of China Tax Collection and Management Law" and understanding the basic procedural regulations of tax collection can help enterprises solve some tax collection and management problems. There was once a real estate development company that took over a real estate project in 2011. At that time, all taxes had been paid and settled. Since 2011, the company has not taken over new projects and has declared 0. In 2021, the tax bureau suddenly proposed that the company's 2011 corporate income tax declaration error, still need to pay more than 200 million tax, otherwise it will be subject to administrative fines and pay late fees, because the boss of the enterprise does not understand the tax collection and management law, everywhere to raise money to pay the tax. However, according to Article 52 of the the People's Republic of China Tax Collection and Administration Law, "If a taxpayer or withholding agent fails to pay or underpays the tax due to the responsibility of the tax authority, the tax authority may require the taxpayer or withholding agent to pay the tax within three years. The obligatory agent pays the tax, but no late fee shall be charged. If a taxpayer or withholding agent fails to pay or underpays taxes due to miscalculation or other errors, the tax authorities may pursue the collection of taxes and late fees within three years; if there are special circumstances, the recovery period may be extended to five years. For tax evasion, tax resistance or tax fraud, the tax authorities shall not be subject to the time limit specified in the preceding paragraph for the recovery of unpaid or underpaid taxes, late payment fees or fraudulent taxes." That is, from 2011 to 2021, it has been more than ten years, and the longest collection period is far more than five years. Taxpayers can communicate with the tax authorities to obtain new solutions.

(III) to stabilize the horse, the need for compliance tax planning.

As far as common business forms are concerned, there are more mature tax planning methods, such as the reasonable tax payment of equity incentives, which can distinguish between listed companies and non-listed companies, combined with the corresponding policy notices formulated by the state, taking into account the actual characteristics of the business to give deferred tax policy, so that employees can enjoy tax benefits. However, it is worth noting that the premise of tax planning is compliance planning, non-compliance tax planning not only can not save tax, but also may lead enterprises to the abyss by violating the boundary of tax evasion. According to the information disclosed by the Shanghai Municipal Taxation Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation, the star Deng Lun tax evasion case was a false declaration through a fictitious business conversion of the nature of income. After being notified by the Shanghai Municipal Taxation Bureau, the hot search clause on the Internet about "Deng Lun was financially trapped" was posted on the hot search. However, the original "tax planning" turned into tax evasion and a fine was paid while the tax was paid. The so-called tax-saving policy adopted by Deng Lun is the "planning" method adopted by many stars in the past few years, through the fictitious business conversion income, the income of personal labor remuneration packaged into the operating income of a sole proprietorship, the use of Horgos and other tax depressions approved collection policy, low tax rate tax. Because a sole proprietorship enterprise does not need to pay corporate income tax, it only pays the "operating income" in the individual tax based on the profit earned, and uses the tax difference to reduce the tax. These so-called "tax-raising" methods, while helping businesses save tax in the short term, essentially touch the red line of tax evasion.

Presumably, many people have browsed the so-called "tax planning" schemes on major short video websites, and most of the schemes given are consistent, including but not limited to opening individual industrial and commercial households, opening family companies, and using the advantages of approved collection or tax return in certain regions to transfer business income. Although they have achieved certain benefits in the short term, they will face late fees and fines once they are checked by tax, as mentioned above, such a tax plan not only can not save taxes, but also bring hidden dangers of illegal crimes to the long-term development of enterprises.

To borrow Lauder Branwell's words, "Taxes, like mothers, are often misunderstood, but rarely forgotten." May we all seek our greatest wealth in the context of the Golden Tax IV.

Liu Siyu

Member of the Corporate Compliance Center of Beijing Huixiang Law Firm, Bachelor of Laws from Zhongshan University, Chinese Certified Public Accountant (non-practicing),ISO37301:2021 Compliance Management System Auditor, once worked in the judicial department and United Front Work Department of a municipality directly under the Central Government; during his tenure in the government He has handled more than 100 government administrative reconsideration cases and administrative litigation cases, covering many fields such as public security, housing construction, information disclosure, and housing expropriation on state-owned land. The main areas are administrative case disputes, commercial dispute resolution, corporate risk and compliance management, corporate dispute resolution and other legal services.