Optimizing the Tax and Business Environment: Frequent Recruitment of Departments | Taxpayers | Doing Business

Starting from July, in order to avoid taxpayers from traveling to different places, the tax authorities in Sichuan province have taken the lead in exploring the implementation of "cross departmental and nearby fast processing" for high-frequency matters initiated by taxpayers nationwide. The plan is to achieve that all high-frequency tax and fee matters can be processed in any tax service hall in the province within two months. Currently, the first batch of 73 tax and fee businesses has been included in the scope of universal processing. Not only in Sichuan, but also in recent times, a reporter from Economic Daily learned from tax departments in multiple regions that since the beginning of this year, various regions have launched a series of practical and hard tactics to promote the direct and fast sharing of tax dividends, the upgrading of convenient tax services, and a more fair tax environment, providing strong support for steady economic recovery.

Accurate and direct tax and fee discounts

"The optimization of the tax and business environment is of great significance for the current macroeconomic recovery and growth in China, as well as promoting high-quality development." Li Xuhong, Director of the Academic Committee of the National Accounting Institute in Beijing, said that since the beginning of this year, the tax department has taken the "Convenient Tax Spring Breeze Action" as a high-quality brand of tax and fee services. Through innovative reforms in digital tax collection and management, the tax process has been continuously optimized, tax convenience has been improved, taxpayer compliance costs have been reduced, investment and business environment has been improved, further stabilizing expectations, increasing vitality, and promoting growth.

At the beginning of this year, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council deployed and implemented two batches of tax and fee preferential policies and related policies for continued optimization and innovation. For example, for small and micro enterprises whose annual taxable income does not exceed 1 million yuan, a 25% reduction will be included in the taxable income, and the enterprise income tax will be paid at a 20% tax rate; Increase the pre tax deduction ratio of R&D expenses for eligible industry enterprises from 75% to 100% as a long-term institutional arrangement; Continue to implement policies such as reducing unemployment and work-related injury insurance rates. "Overall, the tax and fee preferential policies implemented this year can stimulate market vitality, boost the confidence of business entities, stabilize market expectations, and ensure stable macroeconomic operation. At the same time, policies also play a positive role in promoting economic transformation and upgrading, stimulating enterprise research and development innovation, encouraging international investment and trade, and promoting high-quality economic development in China." said Tian Zhiwei, Vice Dean of the Institute of Public Policy and Governance at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Good policies focus on implementation. Since the beginning of this year, the tax department has continuously optimized the functions of the electronic tax bureau, providing more services such as automatic calculation of tax reductions and exemptions, automatic pre filling of declarations, and automatic reminders for handling matters, making it more convenient and worry free for taxpayers to enjoy policies. At the same time, we will make good use of tax big data to enhance the accuracy of policy promotion, establish a nationwide unified system of 4219 tax and fee knowledge labels in 9 categories and 4 levels, accurately match the needs of taxpayers, and transform "people finding policies" into "policy finding people". From January to April this year, a total of 468.9 billion yuan in new tax reductions and deferred tax refunds were added nationwide.

Tax departments in various regions are also actively innovating and finding ways to help taxpayers better and faster enjoy the dividends. In Shanghai, eligible small and micro profit enterprises can conveniently enjoy preferential policies by filling out tax declaration forms through the "One Stop Service" or the Shanghai Electronic Taxation Bureau, without the need for other procedures. This "enjoy without application" function has the characteristics of automatic recognition, automatic calculation, automatic table formation, automatic verification, etc. It can intelligently pre fill preferential items for enterprises, automatically calculate tax reductions and exemptions, saving time and effort. In the pre payment declaration for the first quarter of this year, nearly 176000 enterprises in Shanghai have quickly and conveniently enjoyed the small and micro profit enterprise income tax preferential policies through the "no application, no enjoyment" function, with a cumulative tax reduction of over 6 billion yuan.

The financial manager of Ningxia Yinchuan Power Transmission Technology Co., Ltd. stated that the company is a high-tech enterprise. Recently, the government expanded the scope of the R&D expense deduction policy, and the tax department provided us with guidance materials. The policy analysis is clear at a glance. The local tax authorities also make full use of tax data such as industry categories, business scope, annual declaration forms, and invoicing information to accurately locate policy benefiting enterprises such as research and development enterprises and high-tech enterprises. Targeted guidance is provided based on taxpayer categories and personalized needs, providing full process tax services for enterprises to smoothly complete foreign exchange declaration and accurately enjoy policies.

In Dongyang, Zhejiang, the tax department has formulated and timely promoted a "one enterprise, one package" exclusive policy toolkit for key industries and enterprises, helping enterprises to fully enjoy discounts in a timely manner. "The tax bureau has provided meticulous services, and with a dedicated policy toolkit, we have not missed any of the benefits we deserve," said the financial manager of Zhejiang Yingluohua Magnetic Industry Co., Ltd.

Convenient taxation continues to upgrade

"Since the beginning of this year, the tax department has continued to carry out the 'Convenient Tax Spring Breeze Action', actively carrying out work around improving demand response quality, policy implementation efficiency, fine service upgrading, intelligent tax processing speed up, streamlining processes and upgrading, and improving law enforcement. A total of 81 convenient tax payment measures have been launched in four batches, effectively reducing the tax compliance costs of business entities and improving taxpayer satisfaction," said Tian Zhiwei.

To make it easier for the masses to handle affairs, it is necessary to make data and information run errands. Since the beginning of this year, the tax department has focused on the needs of business entities and continuously accelerated the intelligent handling of taxes and fees. For example, expanding the scope of non-contact matters, piloting functions such as "intelligent pre filling" for value-added tax retention and refund, and "free filling" for export tax refund. At present, 96% of tax and fee matters and 99% of tax declarations can be processed online. The proportion of online and handheld social security payment services in China is over 95%. The pilot digital RMB tax payment function has paid a total of 12000 taxes and fees, totaling 25.9 billion yuan, as of June this year.

At the same time, we have innovated interactive tax collection services, providing intelligent responses and third-party videos to assist taxpayers in solving online tax payment issues. Since the beginning of this year, we have provided 1.48 million interactive services. In addition, the launch of the "Non Resident Cross border Tax Handling" scenario allows non resident enterprises located abroad to quickly process relevant business online through China's electronic tax bureau, and can choose various methods such as UnionPay, cloud flash payment, and cross-border remittance to complete tax payments overseas, truly achieving "no use at once".

"After decades of construction and development, China's tax information system has reached a high level, with one tax business after another being moved to the cloud, greatly facilitating the tax work of enterprises." said Han Yan, Director of the Department of Economics at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Beijing Institute of Technology.

Intelligent tax services are also accelerating in various regions. In Hubei, the "Chu Tax Pass" app enables 131 commonly used tax and fee matters to be handled on the palm. Since the beginning of this year, the tax authorities in Hubei, together with the national treasury department, have promoted the upgrading and transformation of cross provincial and cross regional electronic tax payment systems for 27 commercial banks in the province, basically achieving full coverage of cross provincial and cross regional electronic tax payment for commercial banks.

In Sichuan, the tax department has achieved centralized processing of 15 tax categories and 8 fee categories on one screen, further streamlining the tax processing time of taxpayers, reducing the number of declarations, reducing the risk of underreporting and underreporting, and saving tax costs. As of the end of May, a total of 3444 taxpayers and payers have processed 5229 integrated declarations, involving an amount of 16.02 million yuan.

In Kunming, the tax department has established a remote service studio to provide real-time one-on-one, detailed, and personalized tax and fee services through an expert team. As of now, tax departments in 17 counties and districts in Kunming have established remote service studios, with a total of 75 seats. The remote service studios have received 298000 phone inquiries.

While emphasizing digitalization and intelligence, the service awareness of tax departments in solving the urgent and difficult problems faced by taxpayers is also constantly deepening. For example, the tax department in Beijing has promoted the extension of "handling complaints immediately" to "handling complaints before filing" in theme education, focusing on the problems of prominent feedback, concentrated demands, and wide coverage from taxpayers. They have established a "one question per month" task list, initiated proactive governance tasks, adopted a team problem-solving and list management model, identified problem breakthroughs, and ensured that problems are addressed at the source and efficiently resolved.

Data shows that in the tax related appeals of the 12345 government service convenience hotline in Beijing in 2022, there were over 8000 non invoiced work orders, accounting for over 50% of the total. Platform enterprises in Haidian District, Beijing accounted for nearly 80% of their work orders without invoices. To solve this problem from the source, the tax department of Beijing has selected the Meituan platform as a pilot cooperation. By accurately positioning the accused object, optimizing the dispatch system, integrating third-party merchants into the Meituan APP electronic invoice platform for unified management, and achieving direct connection between invoicing functions and order merchants, consumer invoicing demands have been solved. According to statistics, the monthly tax related complaints on Meituan platform decreased by 9% month on month in June this year.

A fairer tax environment

Recently, the State Administration of Taxation, the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Supreme People's Court, the General Administration of Customs, the People's Bank of China, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange held a national seven department joint conference in Beijing to promote the fight against tax related illegal crimes. The Economic Daily reporter learned from the meeting that since the establishment of a normalized joint mechanism to combat tax fraud and fraud in October 2021, various departments have focused on joint crackdowns on illegal and criminal activities such as "fake enterprises" issuing false invoices, "fake exports" fraudulently obtaining export tax refunds, and "fake declarations" fraudulently obtaining tax incentives, and have achieved significant results. As of the end of May this year, a total of 270000 suspected tax fraud enterprises were inspected, 10.4815 million invoices were identified as fraudulent, and export tax refund losses of 11.78 billion yuan were recovered. Among them, from January to May this year, a total of 65000 suspected tax fraud enterprises were inspected, 1.8462 million invoices were identified as fraudulent, and export tax refund losses of 4.459 billion yuan were recovered.

In terms of cracking down on illegal activities of fraudulently obtaining retained tax refunds, a total of 7813 enterprises suspected of fraudulently obtaining or illegally obtaining retained tax refunds were identified in 2022, and a total of 15.5 billion yuan in tax losses was recovered, effectively deterring criminals and maintaining economic and tax order.

Tax departments in various regions have strengthened coordination and linkage with relevant departments, focusing on illegal and criminal activities such as gang style and cross regional false invoicing, maintaining a high-pressure situation, and actively creating a more standardized and fair tax environment. For example, recently, the police and tax authorities in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, jointly investigated and dealt with a case of falsely issuing special VAT invoices on behalf of others in accordance with the law, destroyed one gang of falsely issuing invoices, and arrested 14 suspect. After investigation, the gang controlled multiple shell companies and used tax self-service machines to issue over 2400 value-added tax special invoices to multiple enterprises without real business transactions, with a total amount of 1.216 billion yuan in value and tax. At present, the case has been transferred by the public security department to the procuratorial organs for review and prosecution.

"The tax authorities make full use of big data technology to timely detect tax related illegal activities, which not only improves the efficiency of tax inspections and promotes tax fairness, but also reduces the interference of on-site inspections on legitimate operating enterprises, effectively maintaining a fair and just economic environment." Han Yan said.

"We should take advantage of the good opportunity of China's digital tax collection and management transformation and upgrading, focus on the difficult and new problems of taxpayers in the new development stage, and actively use intelligent technology to explore new ways and approaches to improve the refinement, intelligence, and personalization level of tax and fee services." Li Xuhong said that equity services should be integrated throughout the entire life cycle of business entities, and a better tax and business environment should be continuously created.

"Next, the tax department will strengthen investigation and research in the theme education, actively respond to the concerns of business entities, introduce more measures that benefit enterprises and the people, and strive to create new achievements in promoting high-quality development." said Shen Xinguo, Director of the Tax Service Department of the State Administration of Taxation.