In recent years, the online economy has flourished, with popular stores and streamers achieving explosive revenue growth due to their traffic advantages. However, tax compliance issues have repeatedly crossed the red line. Many internet celebrities and online store owners have monthly revenues of hundreds of thousands or even millions, yet their tax records cannot be found in the tax system.
On November 4 of this year, the State Administration of Taxation publicly exposed six cases of tax evasion involving internet celebrities and online stores, with the amounts involved ranging from 670,000 to 3.66 million. The final penalty amount reached as high as 6.6958 million yuan, sounding the alarm for compliance in the e-commerce sector.
Today, the Sa Jie team will provide readers with a detailed breakdown of the common practices of tax evasion by internet celebrities and online stores, analyzing the regulatory logic of tax authorities and the legal consequences faced by tax evaders.
After thoroughly dissecting the six tax evasion cases exposed by tax authorities in Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Qingdao, the Sa Jie team summarizes the tax evasion methods and amounts of each party as follows.
"Public accounts for cash flow, private accounts for hidden profits" is a common issue among many online stores. In the six cases exposed this time, five involved "concealing sales income," which is almost a standard method for many internet celebrity stores to evade taxes. The main approach is to use personal accounts instead of corporate accounts to receive business payments, transferring sales income that should be included in the taxable range "outside," not recorded in accounting books, while using the excuse of "unbilled income does not need to be declared" to refuse to report this income to tax authorities, thereby evading value-added tax and income tax.
For example, in the Harbin Hongbo Trade City Women's World online store, all sales income generated from live broadcasts was uniformly settled by the platform. After deducting the agreed service fee, the remaining sales amount was directly transferred in full to Yang Yiou's personal account, artificially creating the illusion that her sales volume met the small-scale taxpayer standard, concealing real income and underpaying taxes totaling 1.1248 million yuan.
However, receiving payments in personal accounts is not a safe haven; bank statements and platform transaction records can serve as verification bases for tax authorities. Once tax evasion is discovered, full recovery of the owed taxes is inevitable.
E-commerce companies register a large number of shell companies to split sales income, illegally enjoying tax preferential policies for small-scale taxpayers or micro-enterprises; or directly using the revenue-sharing model of e-commerce platforms or third-party payment companies to split income among multiple companies under their control, concealing business income.
For instance, the Shangpinwu Clothing Store in Donghu District, Nanchang City, split its business entities, registering 12 stores across five online platforms with three business entities, splitting some income into multiple accounts, thus evading the tax declaration system.
According to regulations, market entities must complete tax registration within 30 days of obtaining a business license. Even unbilled income must be reported truthfully. However, some operators mistakenly believe that "not registering for tax means no tax is owed," and by refusing to fulfill their tax registration obligations and not confirming tax information, they achieve the goal of evading tax supervision.
The Shangpinwu Clothing Store in Nanchang is a typical example: it obtained a business license in 2017 but did not register for tax, yet in three years, the store only reported a single tax payment of 36 yuan, a stark contrast to its million-dollar sales.
Internet celebrity stores use one or more of the above methods to underreport or conceal income, reducing the taxable base and underpaying value-added tax, personal income tax, corporate income tax, and other taxes, thereby evading tax collection and obligations, which disrupts the order of tax administration and the market economy.
This concentrated exposure is not a "passing wind." Combined with the advancement of the Golden Tax Phase IV and recent regulatory actions, the Sa Jie team believes it has released three major regulatory trends in the field of online e-commerce taxation that all operators need to be vigilant about:
Why is the tax bureau focusing on "internet celebrities" and "online stores"? Today's online e-commerce, short videos, and live streaming sales are no longer "side jobs for small profits," but rather substantial, scaled commercial activities.
According to the "China E-commerce Report (2024)," China's e-commerce industry has a vast market scale and continues to grow: in 2024, the national e-commerce transaction volume will reach 46.4 trillion yuan, an increase of 3.9% from the previous year; the national online retail sales will reach 15.2 trillion yuan, maintaining its position as the world's largest online retail market for 12 consecutive years. From the 2021 Wei Ya case to the six recent tax evasion cases, in the context of high revenue but weak regulation, online e-commerce has become a key target for tax scrutiny.
The Golden Tax Phase IV system has established a "sky net" that connects data from 15 departments, including taxation, banking, and industry and commerce, achieving a shift from "controlling taxes by invoices" to "governing taxes by data." In this model, tax authorities can use comparisons of platform transaction flows, bank receipt details, and invoice issuance information to accurately identify issues where "declared income does not match actual revenue."
Moreover, it is worth noting that the current regulatory scope is no longer limited to the operating entity itself but will also penetrate to examine the flow of funds and goods in its upstream and downstream. For example, the income from tips received by internet celebrities, invoices provided by online store suppliers, and the flow of funds after receiving payments in personal accounts will all fall under regulatory scrutiny, ultimately forming a "full-chain, no-dead-angle" regulatory pattern, where any sense of luck will be met with reality!
Currently, China's regulatory attitude towards tax violations has fully presented a "zero tolerance" stance. This attitude is reflected not only in the "discovery and investigation" of tax evasion but also through clear and strict penalty standards, directly breaking the lucky mindset of some operating entities.
From the six exposed cases, all violators have borne the "full recovery of underpaid taxes + daily late fees + fines of 0.5 to 5 times" composite responsibility, with no exceptions for "leniency or exemption." Behind this penalty model is a significant increase in the "cost of tax evasion."
In today's "governing taxes by data," tax evasion is no longer a matter of luck but rather an "inevitable investigation" outcome. In the context of the online platform economy, both e-commerce platforms and online store merchants have corresponding obligations and responsibilities.
In June 2025, the State Council announced the "Regulations on the Reporting of Tax-related Information by Internet Platform Enterprises," which will officially take effect from the date of publication. Starting from October 1 of this year, internet platform enterprises will officially report the identity information and income information of operators and employees within the platform for the first time. This marks the first time in China that a specific administrative regulation has clarified the reporting obligations of platform enterprises regarding tax-related information, signifying a shift in the supervision of operating entities within platforms from "extensive regulation" to "precise management," and from "post-event investigation" to "source prevention."
Internet platform enterprises must report tax-related information such as the identity information and income information of operators and employees within the platform to their competent tax authorities in accordance with regulations. Failure to report or provide tax-related information within the specified time, concealing, falsely reporting, or omitting tax-related information, or causing tax-related information to be untrue or inaccurate due to the internet platform enterprise's reasons, as well as refusing to report or provide tax-related information, will face fines or even business suspension and rectification.
In specific scenarios such as cross-border e-commerce and tax-related issues for individual operators, platforms must directly fulfill the responsibility of withholding and paying taxes. Failure to do so will constitute "tax evasion by the withholding obligor":
1) Cross-border e-commerce retail imports
According to Article 3 of the Customs Law, the platform, as the withholding obligor, must withhold and pay the customs duties, value-added tax, and consumption tax on imported goods, deducting the taxable amount when paying the foreign seller, and paying the taxes within fifteen days from the date of completion of the declaration. If the platform fails to withhold and pay and the amount exceeds 100,000 yuan, it may constitute tax evasion.
2) Withholding and paying personal income tax
For online streamers who have not registered for tax, if the platform (live streaming platform or MCN economic company) has an employment relationship with the streamer, it must withhold individual income tax according to salary income; if there is a cooperative service labor relationship, it must withhold individual income tax according to labor remuneration income.
According to the "Tax Collection and Administration Law of the People's Republic of China," the following behaviors constitute tax evasion if taxes are not paid or underpaid:
1) Forging, altering, concealing, or unlawfully destroying books and accounting vouchers;
2) Listing excessive expenses or failing to list or underlisting income in the books;
3) Refusing to declare after being notified by tax authorities;
4) Making false tax declarations after being notified by tax authorities.
If the involved enterprises engage in the above behaviors, they will be required to repay the relevant taxes, late fees, and may be fined by tax authorities up to five times the amount of unpaid or underpaid taxes.
If an enterprise evades taxes by issuing false invoices, it will also violate Articles 21 and 35 of the "Invoice Management Measures." The involved enterprises will face confiscation of illegal gains and fines of up to 500,000 yuan.
In addition to the above administrative responsibilities, tax-evading enterprises will also face the risk of a downgrade in their corporate tax credit rating, which will affect their subsequent business activities.
1) Tax evasion, evading tax recovery, and tax resistance crimes
If a taxpayer uses deception or concealment to make false tax declarations or fails to declare, evading a significant amount of tax (standard is over 100,000 yuan) and accounting for more than 10% of the taxable amount, it may constitute tax evasion.
However, the criminal law has set an objective penalty condition to narrow the scope of punishment. If the taxpayer pays the owed taxes and late fees after receiving a recovery notice from the tax authorities and has already been administratively punished, they may not be held criminally liable.
In addition, if a taxpayer owes taxes and uses methods to transfer or conceal assets, making it impossible for tax authorities to recover the owed taxes, it may also constitute the crime of evading tax recovery; if they refuse to pay taxes using violence or threats, it may constitute the crime of tax resistance.
2) Issuing false invoices and issuing false value-added tax special invoices
The behavior of issuing false invoices in the operation of e-commerce platform enterprises is not uncommon.
Some e-commerce enterprises, with the aim of tax evasion, issue false value-added tax special invoices or ordinary invoices, using these invoices to extract funds or change the nature of transactions, thereby underpaying taxes and reducing costs for the enterprise or related parties.
Regardless of the method, it constitutes the behavior of issuing false invoices that the state severely punishes. Tax authorities will impose fines while recovering taxes and late fees. If the tax amount of false value-added tax special invoices or ordinary invoices exceeds a certain amount, it will be transferred to public security authorities for criminal responsibility.
From the perspective of industry development trends, the platform economy must shift from barbaric growth to high-quality development, and compliance is the only way. When some online streamers and online store operators reduce operating costs and gain unfair competitive advantages through tax evasion, those who operate in compliance and pay taxes will suffer losses.
Such a distorted phenomenon of "lawbreakers benefiting, law-abiders suffering" can easily trigger a vicious cycle of "bad money driving out good," damaging fair competition in the market and the healthy ecology of the industry.
For operators and employees within the platform, the only way to maintain the bottom line of compliant operations is to focus on enhancing product quality, optimizing service experience, and building core competitiveness, thereby solidifying their position in an increasingly regulated market environment and achieving long-term stable development.
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Original text: “Live streaming sales, tax evasion will be strictly investigated?!”
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