The existence of enterprises is to make profits, and taxation, as the cost of enterprises, is closely related to the interests of enterprises. It is the business goal of every enterprise to control the cost of the enterprise reasonably and effectively and maximize the profit. To achieve this goal, only tax planning. As tax planning is still a new thing in China, it is still in the initial stage of exploration, learning and implementation. Therefore, it is not particularly clear how to reasonably, legally and effectively reduce corporate tax burden, improve capital recovery rate, maximize corporate interests and create vitality for the further development of enterprises. Even now, most enterprises do not have their own separate tax departments, and only some powerful multinational enterprises have their own separate tax departments and tax managers. With the continuous standardization of national tax policy and the continuous development of social economy, tax planning has more and more influence on the economic benefits of enterprises, and has become an indispensable part of taxpayers' financial management or operation as a whole. Misunderstanding of tax planning For enterprises, the main goal of operation is to ensure that enterprises have sufficient competitiveness and pursue profit maximization. Internally, if an enterprise wants to increase profits and assets, it can certainly increase its income by adjusting commodity prices, increasing sales and improving product quality, but the price increase may lead to the risk of losing the market, thus forcing enterprises to make efforts to reduce costs, consumption and tax burden as much as possible. But often at this time, enterprises take the practice of tax evasion or tax avoidance, thinking that this is tax planning, and understanding reasonable tax planning as tax evasion and tax avoidance. However, this method will be punished by law. As a result, it will not only not exempt the tax obligation and reduce the tax burden, but will increase the tax expenditure of enterprises, affect the image and reputation of enterprises and weaken the market competitiveness. Secondly, tax planning must be planned, designed and arranged in advance. Tax planning can run through the whole production and operation activities, but it is by no means an after-the-fact planning. In economic activities, tax obligation usually lags behind tax behavior. For example, value-added tax or consumption tax is paid only after the transaction, and income tax is paid only after the income is realized or distributed. At this time, some enterprises don't hire a certified tax accountant to plan before the taxable behavior or tax obligation occurs, but wait until the tax obligation has occurred or the tax authorities find out the problem before they think of consulting a certified tax accountant for tax planning, and then try to pay less taxes. Then such an approach is tantamount to mending after the sheep is dead, and cannot be considered as tax planning. In addition, a good planning scheme is not necessarily the least tax. The goal of tax planning is to choose low tax burden and deferred tax payment in order to obtain tax benefits. However, tax planning should not be limited to the tax burden of a single tax, but should focus on the weight of the overall tax burden, because the taxpayer's business goal is to obtain the maximum after-tax profit, which requires its overall tax burden to be the lowest. While considering the overall tax burden, we should also focus on the expansion of production and operation. Even if you pay more taxes, the capital recovery rate can be improved in the long run, which is beneficial to both investors and taxpayers. Such a tax planning scheme is still desirable. According to the future development direction of enterprises, tax planning must be made according to the future development direction of enterprises. It is necessary to see whether this management model is suitable for the company's own development from the perspective of management, and then whether this model supports the company's business model from the perspective of taxation, and then carry out tax planning on this basis. So it's not just planning for planning's sake. So from the perspective of taxation, we don't just look at a country or a company, but at the whole group. Some strategies may not be cost-effective from the perspective of the company, but they are beneficial from the perspective of the group. In the past, enterprises paid more attention to tax declaration and tax planning. But now you need to make a plan before making a deal and making a decision, because after making a decision and signing a contract, many facts can't be changed, which may lead to the company paying more taxes. So now more and more CFOs realize that before making tax planning and framework, the tax department should also participate, communicate with them in time, listen to their opinions, and avoid unnecessary tax waste. Moreover, more and more enterprises begin to recruit tax managers one after another to know the knowledge of tax policies, control tax risks for enterprises from a macro perspective, and truly proceed from the overall situation and seek maximum benefits for the long-term development of the group through tax planning. How do different types of enterprises carry out tax planning? Enterprises with different organizational forms have different characteristics in taxation. Investors who choose different organizational forms will also have different investment returns, thus affecting the overall tax revenue and profitability of enterprises. Therefore, when an enterprise is established, it is necessary to make some positive plans in the choice of organizational forms. Our country implements different tax regulations for companies and partnerships. The state levies corporate tax on the company's operating profits, and the after-tax profits are distributed to investors as dividends, and individual investors also need to pay personal income tax in one lump sum. Partnership enterprises, however, do not pay corporate tax on their operating profits, but only levy personal income tax on the profits shared by partners. Regardless of its main factors, as far as partnership enterprises and joint-stock companies are concerned, partnership enterprises are superior to joint-stock companies, because partnership enterprises only levy personal income tax once, while joint-stock companies have to levy corporate income tax again; If we comprehensively consider the existence of many factors such as the tax base, tax rate and preferential policies of enterprises, the joint stock limited company also has advantages, because the national tax preferential policies are generally only applicable to joint stock limited companies. Secondly, when calculating the overall after-tax income of the two types of enterprises, we should not only look at the nominal tax rate, but also look at the overall tax rate. Because the "integration" measures of joint stock limited companies are generally better than those of partnerships, "integration" means eliminating overlapping taxes, and some taxes will be eliminated. Third, if there are both domestic residents and overseas residents among the partners, there will be a phenomenon of transnational taxation of partnership enterprises, and the taxation will vary according to different nationalities. In general, large enterprises should choose joint-stock companies, and small enterprises should adopt partnership enterprises. At this time, if enterprises want to operate across regions, the usual practice is to set up subsidiaries in other regions, that is, to set up subsidiaries or branches. Legally speaking, a subsidiary belongs to an independent legal person, but a branch does not. The differences between them are as follows: First, the establishment procedures are different. In other places, there are many procedures to set up independent accounting subsidiaries, and the establishment procedures are complicated and the start-up expenses are also large, while the procedures for setting up branches are relatively simple and the expenses are relatively small. In addition, accounting and tax payment have different forms. Subsidiaries are independent accounting and independent tax returns, which are preferred by local tax authorities, while subsidiaries are not independent legal persons. The head office accounts for profits and losses and pays taxes uniformly. If there is a profit or loss, the branch and the head office can offset each other before paying the income tax. Of course, tax incentives are different. Subsidiaries bear all tax obligations, and branches only bear limited tax obligations. The subsidiary is an independent legal person and can enjoy various preferential policies such as tax exemption period and preferential policies; As non-independent legal persons, branches cannot enjoy these preferential policies. For example, China's preferential policies such as "two exemptions and three reductions" and "preferential tax rate" for foreign-invested enterprises can only be applied to independent legal person enterprises. How to coordinate and communicate with tax authorities in tax planning, and the communication between tax personnel and other departments of the company and tax authorities also largely determines whether the planning is carried out smoothly. Tax officials should communicate with people in other departments of the company, especially those in finance, and do more development. They can't wait until the last problem appears, because in most cases, there is no way to change what has happened. All they can do is reduce the impact. But if we can communicate with the people in the tax department earlier, find the problems earlier and solve them earlier, we can completely avoid the risks. For example, a company wants to acquire a business, but how to acquire and how to operate after acquisition are all things that the company needs to consider before acquisition. This requires financial personnel to communicate with the internal tax department of the company as soon as possible and arrange all matters before the acquisition, such as whether there is any risk in acquiring this enterprise and how to solve it. When communicating with the tax authorities, it should be noted that not everything needs to be clarified with the tax authorities. Because the understanding of tax law between enterprises and tax authorities is inconsistent, what enterprises can do is to communicate with tax authorities as soon as possible and tell them their understanding and practice of tax law, and will not make excessive tax planning because of a little dispute with tax authorities. On the one hand, if the law expressly stipulates that enterprises should pay taxes in a proper way. However, if the understanding of the tax law between the enterprise and the tax bureau is controversial, then the enterprise should prepare enough information to explain to the tax bureau why it made that decision in the first place. Tell the tax authorities the motive behind it. This practice is preferred by the tax authorities. Because it is not like before, the officials of the tax bureau are conscientious and pay more and more attention to tax risk management. Now they need technical and data support from enterprises so that they can make decisions. For enterprises with subsidiaries in different regions, their tax directors should pay attention to such a situation. Maybe when you communicate with a local tax bureau, you will get a good result. However, if we communicate with another tax bureau in the same way, there may be two consequences. One is that this tax bureau agrees with the previous tax bureau, but the other consequence is that the new tax bureau will communicate with the previous tax bureau and then overturn the previous agreement. So the tax manager should weigh how to operate.