China Cross-Border E-commerce: Steady Growth, Tighter Tax

In 2022,despite the influence of various factors such as the macro - environment,Chineseenterprises still achieved steady growth,generally developing in a stable and upward - trending direction.The cross - border e - commerce transaction volume data announced by the state is the most intuitive evidence.

In this year,quite a few large cross - border e - commerce sellers chose to go public.For example,enterprises such as Zibuyu,Saiwei,Suntay,and ZHI OU TECHNOLOGY successfully passed the review.UGREEN also submitted an IPO application.These developments fully demonstrate the prosperity of the cross - border e - commerce industry.At the same time,the state has paid a high degree of attention to the emerging cross - border e - commerce business forms and introduced a series of policy measures to promote the high - quality development of cross - border trade.

However,at the same time,tax supervision is becoming stricter.In December 2022,the news of the completion of the development of Golden Tax Phase 4 spread widely across the Internet.Its tax supervision method of digital control has had a profound impact on the industry.Payment methods such as private accounts,public accounts,Alipay,and WeChat will all be included in the scope of all - round monitoring.For some sellers who use the method of purchasing export declarations,this trend means that their business behaviors will be examined more strictly.There have been cases where the behavior of purchasing export declarations has been recognized as domestic sales,and thus the tax bureau has required the counter - collection of value - added tax.

A specific case is a certain trading Co.Ltd.in Guangzhou.The company was found to have others falsely issue special value - added tax invoices for itself and use the export goods information of others to falsely report export business.From April 2017 to June 2019,the company falsely declared export tax rebates (exemptions) to the competent tax authority,involving an export tax - free sales amount of $16,177,087.68,equivalent to RMB 107,768,950.37.The company has been required by the tax authority to recover the tax rebates of RMB 16,967,717.77.At the same time,the corresponding export goods should be regarded as domestic sales and subject to value - added tax.

Overall,although the cross - border e - commerce market in China maintains steady growth,with the strengthening of tax supervision,enterprises must comply more with relevant regulations in their business activities,especially with respect to tax policies.Business models such as purchasing export declarations that may lead to tax disputes need to be paid special attention to,to avoid significant economic losses due to illegal operations.In the future,while pursuing growth,cross - border e - commerce enterprises also need to strengthen their compliance management to ensure the legality of their business behaviors.Only in this way can they remain invincible in the fierce market competition.