The Law on the Administration of Tax Collection stipulates that the collection and suspension of tax, as well as tax reduction, exemption, tax refund and overdue tax, shall be implemented in accordance with the provisions of laws and administrative regulations; The tax authorities shall not levy, stop levying, over-levy, under-levy, early levy, deferred levy or apportion taxes in violation of laws and administrative regulations. Taxpayers may apply in writing for tax reduction or exemption in accordance with laws and administrative regulations. Applications for tax reduction or exemption must be examined and approved by the examination and approval authorities.
Therefore, lawyers should first comply with the law and go through legal procedures in tax planning. Lawyers should fully understand all tax-related laws, regulations and policies before tax planning, otherwise, once tax planning fails, enterprises will easily be identified as tax evasion, and the loss will outweigh the gain.
2. Effective tax planning
Tax planning should be targeted, and lawyers should aim at the different production and operation conditions of each enterprise. Different regions, industries, departments and production and operation scales have different tax policies and regulations, and the ideas formed in the specific planning process, the perspective of seeing problems and the planning methods adopted will also be different. Therefore, tax planning should be based on the specific situation of enterprises, and appropriate methods such as enterprise separation, merger, foreign investment, depreciation calculation, and cost sharing should be adopted to make the planning scheme feasible.
3. Expected planning
In economic activities, tax payment is usually realized after income is realized or distributed, which objectively provides the possibility for tax planning in advance; Business, investment and financial management activities are diverse. Taxpayers and taxpayers are different in nature, so the tax treatment will be different, which provides taxpayers with the opportunity to choose a business plan with lower tax burden.
Take enterprise income tax as an example: according to the enterprise income tax law, the enterprise income tax rate of resident enterprises is 25%, the enterprise income tax rate of non-resident enterprises and qualified small-scale low-profit enterprises is 20%, and the enterprise income tax rate of high-tech enterprises that the state needs to support is 15%. Therefore, how to make reasonable arrangements for enterprise management and how to characterize enterprises has a great impact on the tax burden.
4. Risk prevention awareness
Lawyers should fully consider risks when planning tax for enterprises, and the result of blind planning is often counterproductive. There are two kinds of risks to be considered in tax planning: the risk in the process of operation and the risk of changes in tax laws and regulations.
The first is the risk in the business process. Enterprises will encounter all kinds of problems in the process of operation, and many of them will have a certain impact on tax revenue, such as enterprise reorganization, enterprise division and merger. The above cases often involve the increase or decrease of taxes, tax rate changes, tax preferences and so on. At this time, the previous tax planning scheme can no longer meet the actual needs, and it is necessary to adjust and optimize the tax structure of enterprises in time.
Secondly, the risk of tax planning is also related to the constant changes of national policies and economic environment. The tax law has a low legal level and may change. The changes of tax preferences and tax exemptions in different industries in different periods are more flexible. If we lack an accurate grasp of the spirit of relevant tax policies, it will easily lead to tax evasion in fact and be punished by taxes. In this regard, as a lawyer, we must always pay attention to the above changes, remind enterprises to make corresponding adjustments in time, take measures to spread risks, and strive for the maximum tax revenue as much as possible.
5. Overall planning
The fundamental purpose of tax planning is to save tax costs, reduce corporate tax burden and seek the maximization of corporate interests through the implementation of planning. However, any plan has two sides. With the implementation of a planning scheme, enterprises will inevitably pay extra fees for the implementation of the planning scheme while obtaining some tax benefits, as well as the corresponding opportunity gains lost by giving up other schemes because of choosing this planning scheme. Therefore, lawyers should grasp tax financing as a whole and make a "cost-benefit" analysis. When the new cost or lost opportunity income is less than the gained income, the lawyer's planning scheme is reasonable, and vice versa.
Take the tax avoidance law of separated enterprises as an example: the tax law stipulates that separated enterprises should pay taxes according to the tax laws and regulations they use. The separated enterprise bears different taxes from the original enterprise, which provides space for tax planning. There are two planning bases for enterprise division: enterprise income tax reduction and exemption. Under the condition of progressive tax rate, the enterprises that used to apply high tax rate are divided into two or more new enterprises through separation, and the taxable income of a single enterprise is greatly reduced, so that the overall tax burden of the separated enterprises is lower than that of the enterprises before separation. Reduce turnover tax. The production of specific products belongs to a separate production enterprise, so as to avoid the application of high tax rate due to fuzzy accounting, thus reducing the tax revenue of enterprises.
However, separation will also increase taxes in some aspects, mainly in the following aspects: increasing part of business tax, part of value-added tax and income tax. Therefore, in the specific planning, we should pay attention to the influence of taxation on economic operation and capital movement, make careful comparison and comprehensive measurement, and make the planning scheme scientific and reasonable.
Tax planning is a complicated work. On the premise of grasping the above-mentioned principled issues, according to the different characteristics of different taxes, various tax planning methods are flexibly used, including: depreciation of fixed assets, ending cost of inventory, packaging, investment and other methods. Only by adapting measures to local conditions and time can we effectively help enterprises save tax expenditure and achieve the purpose of tax planning.