E-commerce taxation has no technical barriers to small and micro enterprises can enjoy preferential tax policies

　　A symposium brings different considerations behind taxation to the forefront.

　　On March 31, the State Administration of Taxation and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce jointly held a symposium on "Deepening Tax Reform and Helping Private Enterprises Development". The original intention of the symposium was to revolve around tax reform. The speeches of Liu Qiangdong and Jack Ma once again ignited the discussion on e-commerce taxation.

　　One side hopes to pay taxes fairly and reduce unfair policies online and offline; the other side emphasizes the role of the Internet in promoting small and micro enterprises, which implies that it continues to be tolerant. There is actually no difference between the two parties on small and micro enterprises, and there is only a part of the "blank area" left in the taxation of e-commerce, which depends on when the policy will be implemented.

　　Treat fairly online and offline

　　Liu Qiangdong reiterated at the meeting that the online store registration and tax collection and management system should be improved and the fair business environment should be maintained online and offline. Currently, on e-commerce platforms, there are some corporate legal persons who open stores in the name of natural persons, do not issue invoices and conceal their operating income, in order to achieve the purpose of tax evasion. This unfair online and offline taxation situation not only impacts the real economy, causes unemployment of physical store employees, and also causes tax loss in the country, and also undermines the basic business principles of honest operation and tax payment in accordance with the law.

　　In the content of Liu Qiangdong's speech, in addition to calling for the promotion of online and offline fairness, it also mentioned that it is necessary to strengthen the reduction and exemption of tax preferential policies for small and micro enterprises, loosen the tax base, lower the tax rate, strict tax management, increase tax reduction and exemption for individual small sellers and personal online stores, and calls for the monthly sales of the value-added tax threshold to increase from 30,000 to 50,000.

　　Some analysts pointed out that the differences in operating models between JD.com and Alibaba have led to different views on e-commerce taxation. JD.com mainly focuses on its own business (belonging to the B2C category), while Alibaba's Taobao is mostly personal online stores (belonging to the C2C category), which makes the two different demands.

　　Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, told a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald that e-commerce or e-commerce platforms above the scale have industrial and commercial registrations and are also paying taxes normally. The outside world mentioned that online and offline are unfair, and that C2C is concentrated on some e-commerce platforms, or B2C under the name of C2C. These are mostly manifested as personal online stores, without industrial and commercial registration, and without paying taxes. However, the scale of these C2C "individual" online stores is equivalent to that of individual business owners, or small and medium-sized enterprises.

　　The issue of taxation in e-commerce has a long history. As early as 2013, Zhang Jindong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of Suning Cloud Commerce, made a hot discussion. Suning Cloud Commerce is also a B2C e-commerce company. Zhang Jindong's proposal directly points to websites such as Taobao, pointing out that 90% of current e-commerce transactions are engaged in B2C transactions in the form of C2C, and about half of the transaction volume is free from legal supervision, resulting in the flood of counterfeit products and serious infringement. It is recommended to strengthen supervision.

　　"Even if it is some B2C under the name of C2C, according to our estimates, the larger business scale is equivalent to offline medium-sized enterprises, and this part should be paid taxes." Zhao Ping said.

　　There are no technical obstacles to taxing e-commerce

　　Online and offline competition, as well as differences in taxation, supervision, etc., have always been the focus of the outside world.

　　On the day of "Double 11" in 2016, at the press conference of the State Information Office, Fang Aiqing, Vice Minister of Commerce, said in response to a reporter's question that in recent years, the development of online retail has been very fast, and the growth rate of physical stores has slowed down relatively. This fast and slow creates a significant contrast. In the early stages of online shopping development, there was indeed competition online and offline. However, with the continuous development of online shopping, this kind of competition has gradually become cooperation and integration. The integrated development of online and offline can complement each other's advantages and is the future development direction of the retail industry.

　　As for the issue of unfair competition in taxation and supervision, Fang Aiqing responded from a regulatory perspective. Fang Aiqing said that due to the development of e-commerce and online shopping, it has broken regional boundaries, link boundaries, and industry boundaries. The traditional supervision model is designed according to local management, link management, and industry management. It is difficult to supervise online enterprises, which has indeed made some differences in the degree of looseness of online and offline supervision. A key task of the Ministry of Commerce in recent years is to maintain fair competition and build a law-based business environment.

　　A tax expert told a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald that there is no essential difference between online e-commerce and offline physical store sales. There is no preferential policy for e-commerce in tax laws, and there are no policy obstacles to taxing e-commerce according to existing policies.

　　Zhao Ping said that even if personal online stores are included in the tax category, they still apply relatively low tax rates, and the tax burden and cost impact is not large; it is mainly due to unfairness caused by different policies, such as offline individual industrial and commercial households of the same size need to register industrially and commercially, and tax declarations must be made; but online personal online stores are exempted.

　　Are there taxes on "blank areas" such as personal online stores?

　　Liu Qiangdong said that in response to the e-commerce taxation issues that concern all sectors, first of all, we should clarify the vague understanding of e-commerce taxation and correctly understand the role and significance of fair taxation; secondly, relevant laws and regulations should be improved as soon as possible, and e-commerce practitioners should be cleared to handle industrial and commercial registration in accordance with the law, and to clarify the tax obligations of e-commerce. On this basis, relevant tax preferential policies should be applied to small and micro practitioners.

　　At the symposium on March 31, Wang Jun, director of the State Administration of Taxation, said that technically, it is completely possible to impose taxes on small businesses. However, for small e-commerce, emerging business formats, especially new business formats that can bring employment, we must be very cautious in handling taxation and should support development more.

　　In July 2016, Lou Jiwei, then Minister of Finance, said that the digital economy brought the complexity of business activities, and in the digital economy, many shadow banks are not taxed, and the digital economy should be taxed, but it is very technically difficult. Because these industries have increasingly strong social influence and vested interests, taxation cannot replace supervision, and supervision must be increased so that taxation can be increased. Supervision is the basis, and without supervision there will be no taxation.

　　The above-mentioned tax experts pointed out that under the background of "three certificates in one", industrial and commercial registration will be naturally entered into the tax system. Supervision of online e-commerce requires more comprehensive and systematic policies, not just taxation. As for management processes such as tax declaration, in order to promote the development of e-commerce, preferential policy arrangements such as tax exemption below the limit can be allowed. (21st Century Business Herald)

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