1. Policy risk. The risk of tax planning by using national policies to save taxes is called policy risk. Policy risk includes policy choice risk and policy change risk. The risk of policy choice refers to the uncertainty of whether the policy choice is correct or not. This kind of risk is mainly caused by the planners' insufficient understanding, incomplete understanding and inaccurate grasp of the policy spirit. That is, the planner thinks that his actions are in line with the spirit of national policies, but in fact they are not in line with national laws and regulations. For example, a garment factory accepts buttons purchased by individual operators, but because it fails to complete the purchase procedures as required, it is confirmed by the tax authorities to accept third-party invoices during tax inspection, which not only cancels the deduction, but also will be punished accordingly. The risk of policy change refers to the uncertainty of policy prescription. In order to adapt to the development of market economy, reflect the national industrial policy and adjust the economic structure in time, a country's tax policy cannot remain unchanged, and it is always necessary to make corresponding changes with the development of the economic situation, supplement, modify or improve the existing tax laws and regulations in time, constantly abolish the old policies and introduce new regulations in time. In this sense, the government's tax policy is always irregular, or relatively short-term. For example, from 1998 1 to 1999 65438+2, in order to resist the impact of the Southeast Asian financial crisis that swept the world from 1997 and stimulate foreign trade exports, the State Taxation Bureau has adjusted the export tax rebate policy six times, and the national average comprehensive tax rebate rate has increased by 3 percentage points; During the three years from 1999 to 200 1, in order to meet the requirements of the development of market economy and the development of various economic and trade situations at home and abroad, China's export tax rebate policy changed 1 1 times; According to the Financial Times, in order to facilitate the tax redistribution between the central government and local governments, reduce the government's financial burden, ease the pressure of RMB appreciation in the market, and gradually weaken the impact of China's increase in export tax rebate rate 1998 after the Asian financial crisis, it is expected that the China government will reduce the export tax rebate rate from 2004, that is, from the current average 15% to/kloc-0. At the same time, first cancel the export tax rebate for wool, lead, coke, rare earth and tungsten; The export tax rebate policy will be completely abolished around 20 10. From a realistic point of view, once this policy is implemented, those enterprises that rely on export tax rebates for survival will face bad luck, and some will even collapse. Therefore, this non-standard or timeliness of policies will bring great risks to the tax planning of enterprises (especially long-term tax planning).
2. Operational risks. Because the inherent feature of tax planning is dancing with the law, that is, tax planning often operates on the edge of tax laws and regulations to help taxpayers maximize their interests; In addition, China's tax legislation system is multi-level and the legislative technology is not high. Not only are there many ambiguities in the contents of laws and regulations, but there are also some conflicts or frictions between laws and regulations, which are sometimes difficult for professionals to accurately grasp, bringing great operational risks to taxpayers' tax planning. In practice, business risks include two aspects: first, the risk of inadequate application and implementation of relevant preferential tax policies, such as enjoying preferential treatment for welfare enterprises due to insufficient proportion of disabled people and environmental protection due to insufficient proportion of renewable resources. Second, in the process of systematic tax planning, the integrity of tax policy is not grasped enough, which leads to the risk of comprehensive application of tax planning, such as the operation of various tax preferences in the process of enterprise restructuring, merger and division. According to the relevant regulations, under normal circumstances, the merged enterprise should calculate the income from asset transfer and pay income tax according to law. The losses of the merged enterprise in the previous year shall not be carried forward to the merged enterprise to make up. However, if the purchase price paid by the merged enterprise to the merged enterprise or its shareholders, except the equity of the merged enterprise, cash, securities and other assets are not higher than 20% of the face value of the equity paid (or the book value of the equity paid), the merged enterprise may not confirm the transfer profit and loss of all assets or calculate and pay income tax upon examination and confirmation by the tax authorities. All enterprise income tax matters before the merger shall be borne by the merged enterprise. If the loss in the previous year did not exceed the statutory compensation period, the merged enterprise can continue to make up for the income related to the assets of the merged enterprise realized in the next year according to regulations. If these can not be systematically understood and comprehensively grasped, it will be easy to lose sight of one thing and lead to the risk of tax planning failure.
3. Operational risks. Tax planning is a reasonable and legal pre-planning behavior with strong planning and foresight. Practice has proved that the change of enterprise's expected economic activities has a great influence on the benefit of tax planning, and sometimes it will directly lead to the failure of tax planning. Because the process of tax planning is actually the process of choosing tax policy differences. But no matter what the difference is, it must be based on certain preconditions and conditions, that is, the future production and operation activities of enterprises must conform to the particularity of the selected tax policy. These particularities not only provide the possibility for the tax planning of enterprises, but also bring constraints to some business activities (business scope, business location, business period, etc.). ) enterprises, thus affecting the flexibility of business activities themselves. If the economic activity itself changes after the project investment, or misjudges the expected economic activity of the project, it is likely to lose the necessary characteristics or conditions for enjoying tax incentives, which will not only fail to reduce the tax burden, but will increase the tax burden. In order to guide foreign investment, China's current tax system implements the preferential income tax policy of "exemption from two and reduction from three" for production-oriented foreign-funded enterprises whose production and operation period exceeds 10 years. However, if a productive foreign enterprise concurrently engages in non-productive business, and the income from non-productive business exceeds 50% of the total business income, it will lose its qualification as a "productive" enterprise and may no longer enjoy this preferential tax policy. For example, a joint-venture electronic equipment factory is a productive enterprise, and it is still in the period of tax reduction and exemption (half levy 15%). Due to the poor sales of its products, the parts of electronic complete sets of equipment are outsourced to other manufacturers for assembly, so the factory is engaged in both productive and unproductive assembly business. If an enterprise's spare parts assembly business accounts for more than 50% of its total business income this year, although the enterprise is still in the period of tax reduction and exemption, it cannot be levied by half and can only pay taxes at 30%. It can be seen that in order to enjoy the preferential income tax policy of "exemption from two and reduction from three", the enterprise should control the scale of unproductive assembly business within the scope of productive operation when making investment choices in these two businesses this year. However, under the market economy system, the production and operation activities of enterprises are not static, and must be adjusted accordingly with the changes of the market and the requirements of strategic management of enterprises. Therefore, changes in business activities always affect the implementation of tax planning programs, and enterprises must face possible risks.
4. Law enforcement risks. Strictly speaking, tax planning should be legal and in line with the intention of legislators, but this legitimacy needs to be confirmed by the tax administrative law enforcement department. In this confirmation process, there is objectively the risk of tax planning failure due to the deviation of tax administrative law enforcement. Because China's tax law often leaves some flexibility for specific tax matters, that is, within a certain range, tax authorities have discretion, while the quality of tax administrative law enforcement personnel is uneven, which objectively provides the possibility for tax policy implementation deviation. That is to say, even if it is a legal tax planning act, the result may be that the deviation of tax administrative law enforcement makes the tax planning scheme infeasible in practice, thus making the scheme a dead letter; Or be investigated as tax evasion or malicious tax avoidance, not only can not get the income of tax saving, but will increase the tax cost and produce the risk of tax planning failure. For example, China's value-added tax law stipulates that the threshold for individuals to sell goods is 2000 ~ 5000 yuan, the threshold for providing taxable services is 1500 ~ 3000 yuan, and the threshold for each tax payment is 150 ~ 200 yuan. The specific threshold can be determined within the above range according to the actual situation. Therefore, enterprises often encounter some conceptual conflicts and behavioral obstacles from grass-roots tax administrative law enforcement organs when planning taxes. This kind of example has been disclosed in the media and is also common in practice.
In addition, tax planning also faces the risk that the planning results and planning costs are not worth the candle. For example, there is no comprehensive comparative analysis of the situation of enterprises, resulting in planning costs greater than planning results; The risk that the planning direction is inconsistent with the overall goal of the enterprise is effective on the surface, but in fact the enterprise has not benefited from it, and so on. These are all objective risks in the process of tax planning, and they are also factors that enterprises should study and pay attention to in the process of tax planning.