Can the shares of private companies be transferred for free?

It can be seen from the provisions on the nature of equity in China's Company Law that equity can be transferred free of charge, but relevant taxes and fees must be paid and industrial and commercial changes must be made. Both parties can choose to sign a free equity transfer agreement or a paid equity transfer agreement when transferring equity. In practice, especially in many start-up enterprises, due to the lack of awareness of legal risk prevention and control, shareholders, for conscious or unconscious reasons, clearly agreed that the transaction price of equity was "zero yuan" by signing an equity transfer agreement, but did not clearly indicate whether the nature of equity disposal was transfer or gift, which left hidden dangers for legal disputes afterwards and may damage the legitimate interests of all parties to the transaction. Although from the result, the meanings expressed by gift and free transfer are similar, from the legal perspective, there are great differences between them. Therefore, when transferring the equity, we should pay more attention to indicating whether the equity is a gift or a transfer in the agreement.