The regulatory authorities finally shot. On May 9 this year, China State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China and six ministries and commissions issued the Administrative Measures for Due Diligence of Tax-related Information in Non-resident Financial Accounts, promising to implement the automatic exchange standard of tax-related information in financial accounts (General)
Reporting standard, hereinafter referred to as CRS). In other words, in the near future, most of the overseas financial account information of high-net-worth individuals or enterprises in China will be known by China tax authorities.
background
Suppose that China residents have financial accounts such as deposits and stocks in Australia, Britain and Austria. In the past, this was a blind spot for China tax authorities, and enterprises and individuals might evade taxes and launder money. However, if these countries can exchange non-resident financial account information with each other now, it will not be so easy to make "small articles".
Undoubtedly, the primary purpose of CRS landing in China is to combat cross-border tax evasion and money laundering. From June 20 14 to June 20 17, China's foreign exchange reserves decreased from US$ 3,923.2 billion to US$ 2,998.2 billion, a total decrease of 25%. In addition, the depreciation of RMB has further intensified, and the irrational investment of enterprises and individuals overseas has also increased rapidly.
China Private Wealth Report 20 17 jointly written by China Merchants Bank and Bain Company shows that in 20 17, nearly 60% of high-net-worth individuals owned overseas assets, while in 20 1 1 year, the proportion was only 20%. In the past few years (20 15 and 20 16), China exported more than one trillion yuan of financial assets overseas every year.
Take bitcoin as an example. Because of its anonymity, it is decentralized (independent of a government), and Bitcoin can easily provide a platform similar to underground money houses. Therefore, bitcoin has gradually become a popular means for China investors to transfer assets overseas under the circumstance that the central bank has blocked the leak in many ways. Starting from 20 14, the China bitcoin trading market began to dominate the bargaining power, and the mainland market once accounted for 90% of the global bitcoin trading volume.
Tax haven
The countries and regions favored by the invisible rich are the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Bermuda and other low-tax areas, which are known as "tax havens". According to the data of State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China, by the end of 20 16, China's "tax havens" lost more than 30 billion yuan in tax revenue every year.
In addition, you may not expect that many domestic Internet companies are registered in the Cayman Islands. The Virgin Islands is just a point on the map, but there are 200,000 China companies here. That's interesting. Is there no suitable place to register the 9.6 million square kilometers of land in China, and you have to go all the way to the island to register?
With such questions, I searched the financial policies of these areas and was shocked in an instant. To what extent is the policy generous: highly confidential about the company's shareholder information, shareholding ratio and income status; Only a small amount of annual management fee is charged to registered enterprises; No tax or extremely low tax burden; There is no foreign exchange control. Companies established in these countries (regions) are almost all recognized by major international banks and can open accounts in banks. In other words, the actual controllers and assets of most companies are actually hidden or even invisible.
tool
CRS was originally proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but in the OECD version, there is no definition of negative non-financial institutions and entities, and China is the only country that has signed the agreement so far.
According to the definition given by State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China, there are two main types of negative non-financial institutions and entities. First, the income over 50% of the total income in the past year comes from dividends, interest, rent and franchise rights; Second, more than 50% of the assets held in the past year can generate negative returns. Negative income refers to dividends, interest, rent, franchise rights and other income.
To put it bluntly, cracking down on negative non-financial institutions and entities means cracking down on tax evasion through the establishment of shell companies, illegal possession, false trade and other means.
For example, many enterprises will set up a shell company in overseas tax havens and then buy the products of domestic companies at high prices. Because the cost of importing products from tax havens is very low, companies can earn high export tax rebates and government subsidies, which is the most common means of false trade.
The landing of CRS is undoubtedly the most fatal blow to this method. According to the "infiltration" rule of CRS, financial institutions must identify the actual controller behind them and take it as the real reporting subject. If financial institutions can't identify the holder's structure, or deliberately conceal it, they may violate the anti-money laundering law.
measure
As of June 30th this year, 1, 0 1 countries (regions) have promised to implement CRS, and 96 countries (regions) have signed multilateral or bilateral agreements to implement CRS.
When it comes to implementation, it is to grasp the big ones first and then the small ones. There are several time nodes here. One is 65438+20 17. On February 30th, due diligence should be completed for all high-net-worth accounts of domestic financial institutions (accounts with total balance exceeding 1 10,000 USD). The other is to complete the low-net-worth customer survey on February 3, 20 18 (the total account balance does not exceed the account equivalent 1 10,000 USD). In other words, in addition to high-net-worth customers, the accounts of ordinary customers will also be included in the audit scope in the future.
According to the commitment, China will exchange information with the tax authorities of other countries (regions) for the first time from 2065438 to September 2008. In other words, by September next year at the latest, the financial account information of China residents in most foreign countries will be sent back to China.
rationality
State Taxation Administration of The People's Republic of China official website also made it clear that the respondents were mainly financial accounts, such as savings, cash, stocks, bonds, investment real estate, insurance, Public Offering of Fund, private equity funds, family trusts and private equity funds. Some non-financial assets, such as houses, jewelry, artworks, calligraphy and painting, are not regulated.
In fact, in the past year, the government has been actively promoting the internationalization of RMB and the transparency of the financial environment, from RMB entering the SDR basket, to actively promoting A shares to be included in the MSCI index reference standard, and then to a series of domestic financial reforms and regulatory measures. Therefore, the government will not interfere with normal, rational and legal investment, but will actively promote and encourage it.