Chapter 20 Tax avoidance, it turns out it can be like this!

Zhu Lihong: Associate Professor of School of Finance and Accounting, Zhejiang Gongshang University, special author of "Case". Mr. Cheng runs a real estate company in City H, and has consistently developed high-end real estate with excellent reputation and benefits. An old friend, Factory Manager Li, runs a large state-owned enterprise in H City in a miserable state. Because the old products are outdated, new products cannot be launched. The production scale is shrinking day by day.However, there is an open space overgrown with weeds in the factory area, which belongs to the land left over from history. It has a good location and is close to a main road. It was planned to build a new office building with an area of ​​more than 10,000 square meters. However, the company’s funds are tight, and the land has to be left idle for a long time. .

In order to survive, Director Li decided to revitalize the land.After obtaining the consent of the higher authorities, we began to look for partners to jointly build an office building for lease (because the land is non-commercial land, the building cannot be developed into a commercial building, so the built house can only be leased and not sold).The first partner Mr. Li thinks of is his old friend Mr. Cheng. After Mr. Cheng’s on-the-spot investigation and analysis, he believes that the economy of City H is in a period of rapid development, and the demand for high-end office buildings is increasing. Combined with the brand image of his real estate company and the location of the land It is suggested to cooperate to build the most high-end office building in H City.

After further negotiation, the two parties decided to jointly establish a new company to build the office building and be responsible for the management of the office building after completion. The new company will have Director Li as the chairman and Mr. Cheng as the general manager. With the approval of the relevant management department, the construction of the 20-story high-end office building with a construction area of ​​12,000 square meters started as scheduled. Two years later, a brand-new high-end office building with refined decoration was completed. Except for the 1st to 4th floors reserved for the company's own use, the remaining 16 floors are all leased out.Since the completed office building is a non-commercial building and belongs to its own rental, there is no property management and other expenses, but considering the high construction cost and decoration cost, and the rent includes public facilities usage fees (such as water, electricity, etc.) , gas fees, etc.), the rent is fixed at 8 yuan per square meter per day, which is much higher than the average rent of office buildings in H City at 3 yuan per square meter per day.But after all, it is the most high-end office building in City H. Although the rent is expensive, it is still very attractive, and the rental speed is very fast. Factory Manager Li and Mr. Cheng are very happy.

When only the last half floor of 300 square meters was left, a renter came to see the house, looked around for a week, asked about the relevant expenses, and immediately decided to rent it, but asked to meet with Mr. Cheng. Seeing the general process, the renter revealed his identity as Director Wang of a certain tax agency.Director Wang straightforwardly asked Mr. Cheng to reduce the rent of the last 300 square meters from 8 yuan per square meter per day to 6 yuan. Mr. Cheng was displeased and said: "Is there any reason to lower the price of the house under hot rent? The rent of this building includes many kinds of expenses. 8 yuan per square meter per day is purely normal, and it is by no means a wild asking price. The price is reduced by 2 yuan per square meter per day. How much rent do I have to lose for 300 square meters? I don’t think it’s too expensive, so I can’t talk about it, and besides, entering a tax agency won’t add luster to my building, hehe, I’m so sorry.”

Director Wang said with a smile: "How can I ask Mr. Cheng to give a preferential price for no reason, but I ask you to drop 2 yuan per square meter per day, which can be said to be reasonable. This seems to be 2 yuan per square meter per day per year. There is no need for Mr. Cheng to bear the loss of hundreds of thousands of yuan, and you can digest it in your own way, provided that you have to listen to my analysis patiently and follow my advice." Mr. Cheng was puzzled, but decided to listen to Director Wang's analysis. The following is Director Wang's analysis: The rental income of office buildings is its main business income, and the operators pay 5% business tax according to the rental income.

However, your office rental income covers a lot of expenses, part of which is the use of public facilities such as water, electricity, and gas.In fact, you only collect the cost of water, electricity, gas and other public facilities from renters, which is only cost and does not include any other additional costs.Then, you pay to specific departments such as power bureaus and water companies that provide public facilities. The public facilities department confirms its operating income, and the operating income recognized at this time includes the costs and fees you collect from renters, and then pays business tax.

When you pay the business tax on your rental income, you have already paid the business tax on the part of the public facilities usage fee.However, the public facilities department has to recognize this part of the cost as operating income again and pay business tax again.This has actually resulted in the status quo of paying business tax twice. For you, is it unnecessary to pay business tax once more? Mr. Cheng felt that Director Wang's analysis was very reasonable, and he made a rough calculation in his mind. The business tax of the public facilities fee paid repeatedly by the whole building is really not a small sum, which is more than two hundred thousand a year.

Mr. Cheng hurriedly said: "Director Wang, your rent of 300 square meters should be calculated at 6 yuan per square meter per day. But you have to give me a reasonable and legal suggestion to avoid double taxation. I will never do illegal things such as tax evasion, tax evasion and other illegal things to protect the reputation of the world." Director Wang: "Of course, stupid people do tax evasion, stupid people do tax evasion, smart people do tax avoidance, and wise people do tax planning. It is absolutely impossible for us to do illegal things. We can only do it under reasonable and legal premise. Under this circumstance, proper tax planning should be carried out to avoid unnecessary double taxation.”

Mr. Cheng invited Manager Zhou from the company's finance department to listen to Director Wang's suggestion. The following are Director Wang’s suggestions to Mr. Cheng and the others: For the payment of public facilities fees, the office building can set itself as the agent of the renter, and the department that provides the public facilities is the counterparty, so that the office building becomes an agency that pays the fee for the use of public facilities for the renter. The department becomes a direct sales tax payer. For the above-mentioned design, the operating income and business tax of the public facilities department have not changed; for the renters, the total rental expenditure has not changed, but the public facilities fee has been paid by the public facilities department instead of the office building.

However, such a design is of extraordinary significance to office building operators. Their operating income will no longer include the cost of public facilities fees charged to renters, thereby reducing the total operating income by a corresponding 5%. Sales tax is also reduced. In addition, according to the corresponding provisions of the "Civil Law", the agency can be a paid agency or an unpaid agency.Therefore, the office building can also charge an appropriate handling fee when the agent pays the public facilities fee.If a handling fee is charged, then only 5% business tax on the handling fee should be paid, and the total amount of business tax on the handling fee is very limited.

In short, through such a design, the tax burden can be far lower than the original tax burden for high-end office buildings where public expenditures account for a high proportion. However, the above-mentioned design still needs to strictly follow the corresponding legal procedures during the implementation process, and the accounting treatment must also be reasonable and standardized: first, the office building should sign an agreement with the renter to pay the public facility usage fee as an agent. Usually, for the convenience of operation, Formatted texts can often be printed in advance; secondly, the accounting of office buildings should account for such businesses separately, and accounting entries such as "collection or other payables - water company" can be set; third, office buildings and specific public facilities When the department settles, the specific public facilities department will issue an invoice, and the invoice must be addressed to the renter who paid the usage fee, and the invoice will be directly transferred to the renter. After being instructed by Director Wang, Manager Zhou immediately realized that such a design can not only remove unreasonable double taxation, but also reduce the overall operating income and bring about a negative impact on other taxes and fees that are levied as a percentage of operating income. Come down, reduce the management expenses of office buildings as a whole. Manager Zhou said: "Director Wang, I have fully understood your tax planning and design ideas. By decomposing the rental income and using the legal agency concept, the business tax of the public facility expenses will be transferred out to avoid double taxation. Moreover, with the rent The lower the income, the real estate tax based on 12% of the rental income can also be reduced.” Director Wang affirmed Manager Zhou's point of view, and further inspired him: "Manager Zhou, can you plan tax from the perspective of real estate tax?" Manager Zhou thought about it, and replied: "If the part of the rental income that does not need to pay real estate tax can be decomposed independently, then it is possible to reduce the real estate tax." Director Wang: "That's right, you can set up another independent property management company to separate the property management fee from the rent, and the office building agency property management company will charge the property management fee, so that the rental income will further decline. Although the agent The business tax of the property management fee collected is transferred from the office building to the property company for payment. The overall payment amount remains unchanged, but the real estate tax can be significantly reduced, because the separated property management fee does not need to pay real estate tax. In this way, is it another How about lowering taxes?" At this time, Mr. Cheng, who was standing by, was thinking about another question. Wouldn't it be beneficial to hire Director Wang's tax accountant firm as a tax consultant unit?Mr. Cheng discussed this idea with Director Wang, and the two parties immediately signed two agreements on renting and employment. This is a typical case of successful tax planning through reasonable decomposition of operating income. According to national regulations, the rental income of houses shall be subject to business tax and real estate tax. The applicable tax rate is 5% of the rental income for the business tax and 12% of the rental income for the real estate tax.If the lessor can decompose the rental income, resulting in a reduction in the turnover directly recognized as rental income, it means that both business tax and property tax will decrease accordingly.Therefore, reasonable decomposition of rental income is a tax planning method usually adopted by housing rental units. In this example, the lessor separates the fees for the use of public facilities such as water, electricity, and gas from the rental income, and adopts the concept of "agent" to avoid paying double business tax. support.Through "agency", the two-way relationship between the original lessor and the lessee can be changed into a triangular relationship between the agent, the principal and the counterparty, and the legal responsibilities will also change accordingly.At the same time, due to changes in legal relations, the taxpayers and tax payment links involved will also change, and it is possible to realize the transfer of actual tax burdens. Based on this idea, the relationship between the office building and the public facilities department, as well as the relationship between the office building and the renter, can become the relationship between the office building as the agent, the renter as the principal, and the public facilities department as the counterparty. triangle relationship.With the transformation of the legal status of office buildings, the taxpayers of the fees for the use of public facilities such as water, electricity, and gas collected from renters have been changed to public facilities departments.That is to say, the link of paying taxes has been changed so that the renter is the actual tax bearer, and the public facilities department obtains business income and pays taxes.Through this operation, the tax burden that the office building should have paid is legally passed on. Of course, this part of the double-payment of business tax itself is irrational. To be precise, the unreasonable tax burden should be corrected reasonably and legally.Of course, the decline in rental income can also bring about a decline in property taxes, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone. But this method may still have certain troubles in actual operation.After adopting the above-mentioned agency method, although the office building is acting as an agent of the public facilities department to charge the renter for the use of public facilities, in fact the renter is directly paying these fees to the public facility department. The fees for the use of public facilities such as water, electricity, and gas apportioned by renters must be changed to be priced according to the actual use of renters.Therefore, the rent of office buildings must be adjusted according to the new situation, which may require precise analysis and calculation. Similarly, the property management fee is separated from the rent, the property management contract is signed separately with the renter, and the agent property management company collects the property management fee. The basic operation idea is the same, but the transfer of the property management fee cannot avoid paying business tax, but The property tax that can avoid paying this part of the fee.Similarly, the rent needs to be adjusted, but the method is relatively simple, as long as the property management fee is separated from the rent by the square meter. For the taxation in the process of house rental, there are actually other tax planning methods, such as turning house rental into a contracting business, especially for properties with good locations and high rents. This is a more effective tax planning method.If an enterprise wants to rent out a house, it needs to pay business tax and property tax, but if the house is contracted out as an asset of the enterprise, the amount of tax paid will be reduced.The contractor and the enterprise (real estate lessor) reach a contracting agreement, and the contractor will pay a certain management fee to the enterprise on a regular basis. The enterprise can formulate the standard of the contracting fee based on the rental price of the house.The key point of adopting this method of tax planning is that there are two bases for the calculation of real estate tax: one is to pay 12% of the rental rent of the house; the other is to pay 1.2% of the residual value of the house.If the house is rented out, the property tax is paid according to the rent; if the house is not rented out, the tax is paid according to the residual value of the house. For example, a state-owned enterprise owns a house in a prime location in the urban area with an original book value of 2 million yuan.Since the rent in this area is generally high, the rent can be charged 500,000 yuan per month. In this way, the annual rent collected by the company is 6 million yuan, and the property tax is paid at 12% of the rental rent of the house, which is 720,000 yuan per year.If the rental of houses is changed to foreign asset contracting business, and the contractor pays a contracting fee of 500,000 yuan to the enterprise on a monthly basis (the standard of the contracting fee is determined according to the rental price), the annual property tax payable by the enterprise will become based on the residual value of the house. 1.2% of the property tax, that is, 2 million yuan multiplied by the applicable tax rate of 1.2%, and the final property tax paid is 24,000 yuan.It can be seen that under the same income situation, the tax burdens of the two are very different, and the latter is surprisingly tax-efficient. In short, using reasonable and legal tax planning methods can directly reduce many taxes of enterprises, which has actually become the key point that must be considered in enterprise decision-making, and is of great significance to the management decision-making level to realize the business objectives of enterprises.