Tax planning in a broad sense refers to a financial management activity in which taxpayers make scientific, reasonable and careful arrangements for their production and business activities without violating the tax law, so as to achieve the purpose of paying less taxes.
This definition emphasizes that the premise of tax planning is not to violate the tax law, and the purpose of tax planning is to pay less taxes.
Including tax saving planning by legal means, tax avoidance planning by non-illegal means and tax burden transfer planning by economic means, especially price means.
In a narrow sense, tax planning refers to a financial management activity in which taxpayers make scientific and reasonable plans and arrangements for their own financial activities such as operation, investment and distribution in advance within the scope permitted by the tax law, on the premise of adapting to the government's tax policy orientation, so as to achieve the purpose of tax saving.
This definition emphasizes that the purpose of tax planning is to save taxes, but tax saving is within the scope permitted by the tax law and under the premise of adapting to the government's tax policy orientation.
The above definition of tax planning basically reflects the connotation of tax planning, but there are still some shortcomings, that is, the purpose of tax planning is not properly expressed.
Whether it is "paying less taxes" in a broad sense or "saving taxes" in a narrow sense, it should not be the purpose of tax planning.
Tax planning is a content of enterprise financial management, which should obey and serve the objectives of enterprise financial management.
The goal of enterprise financial management is to maximize enterprise value. Under normal circumstances, "paying less taxes" or "saving taxes" can increase the cash flow of enterprises and help realize the goal of maximizing enterprise value.
However, this is not absolute. In some cases, simply to "pay less taxes" or "save taxes" may have an adverse impact on the production and operation activities of enterprises, thus leading to a decline in the overall cash flow of enterprises and a decrease in the value of enterprises.
For example, China's value-added tax is still production, and the input tax incurred by enterprises in purchasing fixed assets cannot be deducted.
If a planning scheme is provided to an enterprise, it is suggested to purchase spare parts, and then the enterprise will manufacture the required fixed assets, because the value-added tax on spare parts required for self-made fixed assets can be deducted from the current output tax of the enterprise.
This method is feasible to a certain extent, and it does achieve the purpose of "paying less taxes" or "saving taxes".
However, can this scheme be adopted by enterprises? Under the condition of modern market economy, the competition among enterprises is becoming more and more fierce. If we use indigenous methods to manufacture machinery and equipment needed for production and operation just to pay less value-added tax, it is often not worth the candle.
You know, the product quality of an enterprise depends largely on the machinery and equipment of the production enterprise.
If the product quality declines, the cash flow increased by "tax saving" may be much lower than the cash flow decreased by the product quality decline.
Therefore, the real purpose of tax planning is not to "pay less taxes" or "save taxes", but to maximize the value of enterprises.
In other words, the criterion for judging the success of tax planning is not whether you can "pay less taxes" or "save taxes", but whether you can maximize the value of the enterprise.
The difference between tax planning and tax evasion is essentially different from tax evasion.
From the legal point of view, tax evasion refers to the behavior of taxpayers who explicitly violate the tax law and reduce or evade their tax obligations.
Tax evasion is a kind of illegal or even criminal behavior, and the consequences of its behavior should be sanctioned by national laws.
Article 63 of the Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) Municipality on Tax Collection and Management clearly stipulates that taxpayers who forge, alter, conceal or destroy account books and vouchers without authorization, or report expenses, omit or understate income in account books, or refuse to declare or falsely declare tax after being notified by the tax authorities, and fail to pay or underpay the tax payable, are considered as tax evasion.
If a taxpayer evades taxes, the tax authorities shall recover the unpaid or underpaid taxes and late fees, and impose a fine of not less than 50% but not more than five times the unpaid or underpaid taxes. If a crime is constituted, criminal responsibility shall be investigated according to law.
On the other hand, tax planning is the behavior that taxpayers use tax laws and policies to reduce or eliminate the tax burden and maximize the value of enterprises.
Therefore, tax planning is neither illegal nor criminal.
From the time of behavior, tax planning is the pre-planning and arrangement of operation, investment and financial management before the tax obligation occurs, which has the characteristics of pre-planning.
Tax evasion is carried out after taxable behavior, which conceals and falsifies the established tax obligation, and has obvious characteristics of ex post facto and fraud.
In practice, the boundary between tax planning and tax avoidance is often difficult to define clearly.
Tax avoidance refers to the behavior that taxpayers evade or reduce their tax obligations through legal means. Although legal, this behavior deviates from the legislative intent of the national tax law and reduces the national fiscal revenue.
Different countries have different attitudes towards tax avoidance.
For example, some countries think that tax can't put forward additional requirements in the name of morality, but should bear their legal tax obligations according to the requirements of tax law, as long as it is not illegal, it should be allowed, and there is no need to distinguish between tax avoidance and tax planning.
Some countries divide tax avoidance into proper tax avoidance and improper tax avoidance, which is called proper tax avoidance tax planning, and there is no legal objection.
In China, the concept of tax avoidance is not expressed in law, but scattered in tax policy documents and people's theoretical discussion articles. The general view is to oppose illegal tax avoidance and acquiesce in legal tax avoidance.
An official in State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China, China, was typical in an interview with a media: "Tax planning is aboveboard, and tax avoidance is not advocated. One step in tax avoidance may be tax evasion.
It is precisely because tax planning is both legal and sensitive, which makes people rush and instinctively alert, so it is named "black rose" vividly.
Although tax avoidance is not illegal, it is a subjective loophole in the tax law, which is contrary to the national tax policy and should not be encouraged in practice.
In the face of taxpayers' tax avoidance, on the one hand, the state can take measures to improve the tax law, plug the loopholes in the tax law, and let taxpayers take advantage of it; On the other hand, the concept of "abuse of law" can be introduced into the law, and the taxpayer's trading activities completely out of tax avoidance considerations are not recognized, which is regarded as the taxpayer's abuse of rights, so as to carry out the research and inspection of "anti-tax avoidance" in the actual collection and management.
The effect of tax planning is due to the natural contradiction between tax collection and tax saving, and the direction of tax saving in tax planning is easy to be linked with tax evasion, and it is also easy to arouse the resentment of tax authorities and people from all walks of life. Therefore, tax planning has not been generally recognized and accepted in our country, resulting in tax planning can only be carried out secretly, doing more and saying less.
Many taxpayers or intermediaries engaged in tax planning are also unwilling to publicize their experiences and achievements, fearing that they will become the key targets of tax authorities' inspection.
In fact, tax planning, like anything else in the world, has advantages and disadvantages. The key is to see whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages or the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
We don't deny that the existence of tax planning may lead to the decline of national tax revenue in the short term, but we should also see the favorable side of tax planning, and we can't just see one aspect of the problem and ignore the other, which will lead to the wrong judgment of tax planning.
In this regard, we can analyze the micro-effect and macro-effect of tax planning.
The microscopic effect of tax planning can be reflected in three points: first, it is conducive to maximizing the economic interests of enterprises themselves.
As the main body of market economy, it is the essence of enterprises to pursue the maximization of their own interests under the premise of clear definition of property rights.
The realization of maximizing the economic benefits of enterprises requires not only that the total income is greater than the total cost, but also that the difference between the total income and the total cost is the largest.
In the case of a certain total income, to maximize economic benefits, we must minimize the total cost.
The total cost of an enterprise consists of two parts: first, the internal cost, that is, the production cost of outsourcing raw materials, outsourcing fuel, outsourcing power, payment of workers' wages and allowances, and the period cost of sales, management and financial expenses; The second is the external cost, that is, the tax levied by the state on enterprises by virtue of its power according to the provisions of the tax law.
Reducing internal costs can improve the overall economic benefits of enterprises, and reducing external costs can also improve the overall economic benefits of enterprises.
Therefore, as the main body of the market economy, enterprises must take reducing the tax burden as an important economic goal, so as to maximize their own economic interests under the premise of clearly defining property rights, and tax planning is the most convenient means for enterprises to achieve this goal.
In this sense, enterprises are the most important and direct beneficiaries of tax planning, and the greatest role of tax planning is to meet the needs of enterprises to reduce tax costs.
Second, tax planning is conducive to enhancing the taxpayer's legal concept and improving the tax awareness of enterprises and individuals.
If enterprises want to make tax planning, only by deeply understanding and mastering the tax law can they understand and conform to the tax policy orientation and make rational choices.
For a long time, China's traditional economy has dominated, state-owned enterprises have unified revenue and expenditure, the "big pot" effect is more common, and the legal concept of economic entities is not strong, which makes enterprises and individuals either don't care about the tax system, don't ask, and don't understand its provisions; Or completely rely on human relations, replace the law with words, replace taxes with words, and have a weak sense of taxation.
It can be seen that the basic premise of enhancing tax awareness is to understand and learn tax law, and tax planning aims at economic benefits and can guide enterprises to complete this process on their own.
From the actual collection and management process, it is not difficult to see that the tax planning of enterprises (such as some foreign-funded enterprises and large enterprise groups) is carried out early and thoroughly, and their tax awareness and tax payment behavior satisfy the tax collection and management organs.
Third, it is conducive to improving the financial management level of enterprises and enhancing their competitiveness.
First of all, before making various financial decisions, careful and reasonable tax planning is conducive to standardizing its behavior and making correct decisions, so that the operation and investment behavior of the whole enterprise are reasonable and legal, financial activities run healthily and orderly, and business activities achieve a virtuous circle; Secondly, planning activities will help enterprises to plan carefully, save expenses and reduce waste, thus improving the management level and economic benefits of enterprises; Third, tax planning is a complex system engineering.
Tax laws and policies have certain applicability, relative standardization and strictness in a certain period of time.
In order to achieve the legitimate purpose of "tax saving", enterprises must rely on strengthening their own business management, financial accounting and financial management. Only in this way can the planned scheme be best realized.
Therefore, tax planning is also conducive to standardizing the accounting behavior of enterprises, strengthening financial accounting, especially cost accounting and financial management, and promoting enterprises to strengthen management.
The macro-effect of tax planning can be reflected in four points: first, tax planning helps to improve the efficiency of national macro-control.
Taxation is an important tool for the state to macro-control the economic structure and national income distribution, and the taxpayer's tax planning process is actually a process of accepting the state's macro-control policies.
When taxpayers make decisions on investment, financing, enterprise system reform, product structure adjustment, etc. According to the difference between tax base and tax rate in the tax law, and according to various preferential and encouraging policies, although their tax burden is reduced subjectively, objectively, their production and consumption activities are gradually moving towards the road of optimizing the rational distribution of industries, product structure and productivity under the guidance of the national tax economic lever, which embodies the national industrial policy and is conducive to promoting the flow of capital and the rational allocation of resources.
It can be seen that the more careful the taxpayer's tax planning, the more in place the state's tax control, and the positive effect on social and economic development is far greater than the tax reduction benefits obtained by taxpayers, which should be said to be a "win-win" outcome.
Second, tax planning is conducive to improving the tax system and promoting the quality of tax law.
Although tax planning is an imperfect and immature challenge to the tax law, it is also a taxpayer's feedback behavior to the national tax law and related tax economic policies, and a test of the correctness and effectiveness of the government's policy orientation and the perfection of the current national tax law.
Therefore, the taxpayer's tax planning behavior points out the direction and specific aspects for tax law construction and tax reform.
According to this information, the state can improve the relevant tax policies and the current tax law, thus promoting the development of the national tax system to a higher level.
Third, tax planning is conducive to the long-term sustained growth of national fiscal revenue.
In the short term, tax planning reduces the tax burden of taxpayers and leads to the decline of national fiscal revenue.
However, in the long run, due to the implementation of national macro-control policies and the optimization of economic structure, the sustained and healthy development of the national economy has been promoted, and the improvement of the tax legal system has improved the efficiency of tax collection and management.
Therefore, the final result is to make the national fiscal revenue grow synchronously with the development of economy and the improvement of enterprise efficiency.
Fourth, the implementation of tax planning highlights the authority and seriousness of tax law, which is conducive to increasing the transparency of tax collection and management.
At the same time, due to the intervention of intermediary agencies such as third-party tax agents, parallel supervision over the actions of enterprises and governments has been formed, which has enabled both sides to adopt a cooperative attitude wisely and abide by their respective rights and obligations within the scope prescribed by law, which is conducive to the open and fair implementation of the tax law.
The principles that corporate tax planning should follow are regarded as civilized behaviors of the wise in western countries, but they have long been regarded as mysterious zones and forbidden zones in China. It was not until 1994 that the first monograph "Tax Planning" co-authored by Tang Tengxiang and Tang Xiang, vice president of China Institute of International Taxation and president of Fuzhou Taxation Society, was published by China Finance and Economics Publishing House that the mystery of China's tax planning was unveiled.
The book theoretically defines tax planning and tax avoidance, correctly distinguishes the boundaries between tax avoidance and tax planning, guides enterprises to correctly understand tax planning, and reminds enterprises to curb tax avoidance.
Six years later, in the planning weekly of China Tax News, a column of "Planning Lecture" appeared.
Tax planning is a great leap in social concepts and thinking. From the past, I dare not speak in secret, but now I dare to speak openly in the media.
Nowadays, tax planning has begun to enter people's lives quietly, and enterprises have a growing desire for tax planning and a growing awareness of planning. Moreover, with the improvement of China's tax environment and the enhancement of taxpayers' awareness of paying taxes according to law, tax planning has been favored by some people of insight and professional tax agencies, and many institutions have begun to intervene in corporate tax planning activities.
In Beijing, Shenzhen, Dalian and other areas where tax planning is more active, many professional tax planning websites have emerged.
Various tax planning training courses in society are also extremely popular and overcrowded.
It seems that tax planning is a gold mine, and everyone will gain something as long as they go in.
In fact, tax planning is a highly technical and policy work. Proper planning will bring certain economic benefits to enterprises, but if not, it may bring losses to enterprises.
Faced with this new upsurge of "tax planning", enterprises must keep a clear head.
In tax planning, we should follow the following basic principles: First, the principle of legality. The principle of legality of tax planning is manifested in two aspects: first, it conforms to the existing legal norms, that is, tax planning activities must have a clear legal basis, even if the tax authorities raise objections, they can face them calmly.
Of course, China's tax legal system is complicated, including the laws promulgated by the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), the provisional regulations promulgated by the State Council, the words "finance and taxation" authorized by the Ministry of Finance of the State Council, and the words "national tax", "national tax letter", "national tax right" and "national tax right" promulgated by local governments and provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. How to grasp these laws and documents, in principle, should follow the provisions of the Legislative Law, but also depends on the tax environment, which depends entirely on the tax planners' understanding of the tax legislative background and professional experience; Second, we should pay attention to the new changes in the tax law.
As far as China is concerned, the tax law is relatively stable, but it is constantly making some fine-tuning and introducing some supplementary provisions.
Since the tax reform in the early 1990s, the overall framework of China's tax law has not changed. However, fine-tuning has been going on and changes every year.
In tax planning, we should always pay attention to the changes of tax law. Whether we make our own plans or learn from the experience and methods of other enterprises, we should pay attention to the problem of "prescription", otherwise "reasonable" may completely become "illegal" and tax avoidance may become tax evasion.
Second, the principle of rationality The so-called principle of rationality is mainly manifested in the fact that the facts constructed in tax planning activities should be reasonable. If the structural facts are obviously unreasonable, they will not only be easily found out by the tax authorities, but also be unreasonable and difficult to explain, leading to the failure of tax planning.
To construct reasonable facts, we should pay attention to three aspects: first, we should conform to the behavioral characteristics, and the facts that cannot be constructed cannot be realized, nor can we copy the practices of other industries to our own industries.
Different industries have different requirements for structural facts.
For example, companies that produce beer, food and detergent are all individual agents, and most of them are not qualified as ordinary taxpayers. They only care about the price, which provides a broad world for using profits and freight to decompose sales revenue.
On the contrary, if these methods are moved to companies that produce raw materials, it is obviously not possible, because their sales targets are mainly ordinary taxpayers, and buyers have to deduct them; Second, there must be no anomalies, and it must conform to common sense.
Some products have low added value, large volume and obviously limited sales radius. When decomposing sales revenue with freight and miscellaneous fees, we should pay attention to the fact that the transportation radius generated by freight and miscellaneous fees cannot exceed the normal and reasonable radius, otherwise it is a false fact; Third, we need to meet the requirements of other economic laws and regulations, and we can't just consider the problem from the perspective of tax planning.
In modern economic operation, equity investment activities are very frequent, and merger, division and merger are normal behaviors. In this process, a large number of tax problems have been formed, and the tax planning space is large, but it is also difficult.
Other economic laws and regulations, such as contract law and accounting law, also constrain us to construct reasonable facts. If we don't abide by them, we can't pass them, and tax planning will not succeed.
In short, it is reasonable to construct the facts, and more importantly, according to the actual situation of the enterprise, the designed scheme must be suitable for the right time, place and people, and it is impossible to copy them all.
Third, the principle of prior planning for tax planning, taxpayers must accurately grasp the business processes and business links they are engaged in before the economic business occurs. What taxes are involved in China? What are the tax benefits? What is the legislative space for the tax laws and regulations involved? After grasping the above situation, taxpayers can use preferential tax policies to achieve the purpose of tax saving, and can also use tax legislative space to achieve the purpose of tax saving.
Because the taxpayer's above-mentioned planning behavior is carried out before the specific business happens, these activities or behaviors belong to advanced behavior and need to have advanced consciousness to carry out.
If a business has occurred, the corresponding tax results will also be produced.
When the tax payment result is produced, if the taxpayer changes the result by concealing income and falsifying costs because of the heavy tax burden, it will eventually turn into tax evasion and be punished accordingly.
For example, in enterprise financing activities, enterprises can use a variety of financing methods to obtain the required funds from different financing channels.
From the perspective of financing channels, it can be divided into debt financing and equity financing.
The financing methods of debt financing mainly include bank loans, loans from non-bank financial institutions and other economic organizations, financial leasing and bond issuance.
The financing methods of equity financing mainly include issuing stocks and using the retained earnings of enterprises in previous years.
Different financing channels and different capital costs have different tax effects.
According to the relevant provisions of the tax law, the interest paid by debt financing can be included in the current expenses and charged before income tax, so the interest paid by debt financing can play the role of "tax baffle".
For example, when the enterprise income tax rate is 33%, the enterprise pays interest of 6,543.8+0,000 yuan, reducing the taxable income by 6,543.8+0,000 yuan, thus reducing the income tax by 330,000 yuan, that is, the interest expense is 6,543.8+0,000 yuan. In fact, the enterprise only bears 670,000 yuan.
According to the regulations, paying common stock dividends belongs to after-tax profit distribution, which cannot reduce the burden of enterprise income tax, that is, the actual amount paid is consistent with the amount assumed. If the enterprise pays dividends of 6,543,800 yuan, it actually bears 6,543,800 yuan.
The difference between them leads to the different effects of debt and equity capital on enterprise tax cost and enterprise value.
It can be inferred that within a certain range of liabilities, the more liabilities an enterprise has, the greater the shielding effect of tax, and the smaller the tax burden.
However, many enterprises always ignore tax planning when making financial forecasts and financing decisions at the beginning of the year. On the contrary, when they need to settle accounts and pay income tax at the end of the year, they will consider saving taxes. At this point, the funds raised have been injected, the capital structure of the enterprise has been determined, and the ratio of debt capital to equity capital cannot be changed.
So, for example, equity capital (retained earnings in previous years) raises funds for internal employees by making a makeover, and then tries to reduce the income tax burden by paying pre-tax interest. However, this way of "planning" through fraud will inevitably be sanctioned by the tax authorities.
Fourth, the principle of cost-effectiveness. Any planning scheme has its two sides. With the implementation of a planning scheme, taxpayers will inevitably pay extra fees for the implementation of the planning scheme while getting some tax benefits, and the corresponding opportunity gains lost by giving up other schemes because of choosing this planning scheme.
When the new cost or loss is less than the gain, the planning scheme is reasonable, and when the cost or loss is greater than the gain, the planning scheme is a failed scheme.
A successful tax planning must be the best choice of various tax schemes. We can't think that the scheme with the lightest tax burden is the best tax planning scheme, and blindly pursuing the reduction of tax burden will often lead to the decline of the overall interests of enterprises.
For example, it is the consistent purpose of tax planning to postpone tax payment as much as possible. It is also suggested that the purchased goods such as raw materials needed by enterprises should be purchased as soon as possible, so that enterprises can pay more input tax and less value-added tax in the early stage.
Although the purchased goods of enterprises will be reduced and the input tax will be reduced in the later period, enterprises will have to pay more taxes, but enterprises can still benefit from the above-mentioned deferred tax payment.
There is no doubt that this planning method can indeed bring tax benefits to enterprises, but the tax law stipulates that if industrial enterprises have not put in storage and commercial enterprises have not paid, the input tax on purchased goods shall not be deducted.
In this way, if enterprises want to delay the payment of value-added tax by purchasing goods as soon as possible, they may face a series of problems such as warehouse shortage, large amount of funds occupied by inventory, and increased management expenses, thus greatly reducing the operability of this tax planning method.
It can be seen that tax planning, like other financial management decisions, must follow the principle of cost-effectiveness. Tax planning is a successful planning only when the income of the planning scheme is greater than the expenditure.
V. Risk Prevention Principle Tax planning often operates on the edge of tax laws and regulations, which means that it contains great operational risks.
If we ignore these risks and blindly carry out tax planning, the result may be counterproductive, so enterprises must fully consider their own risks in tax planning.
The first is to guard against the risk of not paying taxes according to law.
Although the daily tax accounting of enterprises is operated in accordance with the relevant regulations, due to the lack of accurate grasp of the spirit of relevant tax policies, it is easy to cause tax evasion in fact and be punished by tax.
Secondly, the integrity of tax policy can not be fully grasped, and enterprises are prone to form tax planning risks in the process of systematic tax planning.
For example, tax planning related to enterprise restructuring, merger and division involves a variety of preferential tax policies. If it is not systematically understood and applied, it is easy to have the risk of planning failure.
In addition, the reason why tax planning is risky is also related to the constant changes of national policies, economic environment and enterprises' own activities.
For example, for a long time, the state may adjust the relevant tax laws, levy some new taxes and reduce some tax preferences.
Therefore, enterprises must make corresponding adjustments at any time, take measures to spread risks and strive for the maximum tax revenue as much as possible.