The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are pressuring the Peoples Republic of China to get corruption and bribery out of their tax system and the illicit transfer of money abroad. The intermediaries they are dealing with are themselves committing criminal offence.
It is a criminal offence to deal with money or assets of any description anywhere in the world that objectively, reasonably could be expected to be the proceeds of tax evasion. If that non-disclosed money appears as an illicit transfer of money the intermediary who facilitated that is perilously close to having committed a crime. PRC tax authorities enforce now little-known and widely ignored regulations.
The Beijing billionaires who set up cryptically named companies in the British Virgin Islands to hold their fortunes are in the cross hairs. So are the Guangdong salesmen living and working in Africa and Latin America. China’s tax officials are now demanding that citizens start reporting exactly how much money they earn overseas.
In asking for this information, national and municipal tax agencies in China are quietly beginning to enforce a little-known and widely ignored regulation: Citizens and companies must pay domestic taxes on their entire worldwide incomes, not just on what they earn in China.
“Chinese tax authorities’ more strictly enforce worldwide taxation, which has always been required of Chinese individuals,” said Edmund Yang, a PricewaterhouseCoopers partner in Beijing.
Hiding assets or pretending someone else called ”Aunty”, a business, trust or nominee account owns them puts you at criminal risk needlessly
[box]Banking secrecy is no longer there. That’s gone. It is over.[/box]
The transition to financial transparency for the entire world of money is not an option, but a necessity in the new dawn of governments gathering and sharing your financial information.
The roots of China’s decision to embrace worldwide taxation trace to the early 1990s. Still a very poor country then, China sent teams of tax officials to the United States, Britain, Germany and other nations to seek advice on drafting a modern tax code. The team paid a long visit to the Internal Revenue Service and was given a two-volume bound copy of the United States tax code and a five-volume copy of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations.
Chinese officials chose the American definition of income, with its worldwide scope, in issuing their tax code in 1993. It remains in force today, although with many amendments.
China has taking the first steps to enforce that broad definition. The government of Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southeastern China, have summoned executives from 150 of the largest corporations to explain the obligation of their employees to pay Chinese taxes. Municipal governments in Beijing and other big cities have contacted big companies in their jurisdictions and told them to provide detailed information on incomes.
The State Administration of Taxation in Beijing has a separate campaign to curb tax evasion by Chinese companies that make overseas investments. New rules made in 2015 ban a wide range of international investments deemed to be tax shelters.
The rules hit many wealthy Chinese individuals, who commonly make their overseas investments through specially created companies, often located in the Caribbean.
Enforcement of the tax regulation and compliance had been low partly because China lacked data on its citizens’ overseas earnings and investments. But the Chinese government has seized on the continuing United States effort to gather more information on the overseas activities of American companies and citizens which uncovers Chinese persons in the process. China has agreements with the United States and other countries to share information on overseas financial accounts belonging to Chinese citizens. The Chinese tax enforcement effort comes as overseas investments by Chinese individuals and companies surging, national tax officials are looking for ways to collect on that trend.
Local governments are seeking new source of tax revenue to offset dwindling revenue from other sources.
The finances of local governments across China have deteriorated considerably in the last two years. Sales of government-owned land to developers for apartment buildings and office towers have dropped as real estate prices have fallen and housing starts have tumbled. At the same time, Beijing has overhauled its system of business taxation to the disadvantage of local governments.
Local governments used to assess a tax of 5 percent on the revenue of most businesses in service industries and real estate, and shared part of the proceeds with the central government. Beijing is phasing out these taxes in favor of value-added taxes, which go directly to the central government. That has given municipalities a powerful incentive to step up enforcement of individual and corporate income taxes, which they still collect and then split with the central government.
While China is taking a page from the United States playbook, Beijing’s tax policies in some ways are even tougher.
The top income tax bracket in China is 45 percent, compared with 35 percent in the United States. That top bracket for the Chinese also kicks in at $12,900 a year after deductions, a much lower income level than in most industrialized countries. In China, overseas citizens are eligible only for an extra deduction of $210 for each month they are overseas.
Tax and regulatory protection is an ORS402(b) occupational pension which is Hong Kong Government regulated, registered and recognized by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Contact us today for a free white paper and/or set-up a private Skype consultation.
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