Recently, a tax evasion case involving Bai Bing, a store-exploring internet celebrity with 40 million followers, was publicly exposed by the State Taxation Administration. Between 2021 and 2024, he evaded more than 9.11 million yuan in taxes and fees by setting up shell individual households and making false declarations. In the end, he was ordered to pay back the evaded taxes and fees, plus late payment surcharges and fines, totaling 18.91 million yuan. This case has once again pushed the issue of tax administration in the live streaming industry into the public eye, triggering widespread discussion on the industry's tax loopholes and making it an urgent task to regulate the tax-related behaviors in the live streaming industry.
Case Exposure Highlights Industry Tax Risks
As live streaming store exploration has become an emerging way of driving consumption, internet celebrity store explorers have gained substantial commercial returns with their large fan bases, enjoying considerable income from advertising cooperation and commission sharing. However, Bai Bing's case has revealed the prevalent tax irregularities in the industry: converting the nature of income by registering shell individual households with no actual operations, turning personal labor income into business income to reduce tax burden; transferring funds through multiple layers of third-party companies and evading declarations by receiving payments through "private accounts"; even listing personal luxury consumption as company costs and falsely claiming expenses to evade taxes. Such behaviors not only cause the loss of national tax revenue and damage tax fairness, but also reflect obvious loopholes in the tax administration of the live streaming industry. Similar tax evasion cases involving internet celebrities such as Wei Ya and Xue Li have occurred many times before, highlighting the urgency of industry regulation.
Multiple Factors Contribute to Tax Loopholes
The formation of tax loopholes in the live streaming industry is the result of the combined effect of multiple factors including anchors, platforms and supervision. From the perspective of anchors, some internet celebrities have weak legal awareness and regard tax evasion as a "shortcut to making money" driven by interests. In addition, the diverse forms of store exploration income and hidden cash flow make it easy to form an "off-book circulation" through private transfers, increasing the difficulty of supervision. From the perspective of platforms and intermediaries, some live streaming platforms have failed to fulfill their obligation of withholding and remitting taxes, and even assisted anchors in evading taxes; some MCN institutions and financial intermediaries have planned and helped anchors commit tax evasion for profit, forming an organized illegal trend. From the perspective of supervision, the industry has developed rapidly with complex formats, and the early supervision mechanism was relatively backward, making it difficult to achieve real-time in-depth supervision of massive online transaction data, giving lawbreakers an opportunity to take advantage.
Joint Efforts to Build a Solid Defense Line for Tax Supervision
In response to industry irregularities, multiple departments have joined forces to introduce a number of measures to plug tax loopholes. Tax authorities have strengthened "tax administration based on data", relying on big data analysis to achieve precise tracking of live streaming income, increased the intensity of investigation and punishment of tax-related illegal acts, and publicly exposed typical cases to form a deterrent. At the same time, they have clarified the tax-related information reporting obligations of online live streaming platforms and MCN institutions, requiring them to regularly report information such as anchors' income and remuneration accounts, and fulfill their responsibilities of withholding and remitting taxes. In addition, tax authorities have optimized tax publicity and guidance to guide anchors to pay taxes in a standardized manner, adopted the audit-based collection method for enterprises and studios run by anchors in principle, and standardized the management of entrusted collection and invoice issuance. Departments such as cyberspace administration, taxation and market supervision have established an information sharing mechanism, deepened coordinated governance, and formed a joint supervision force.
Standardized Development Becomes the Main Industry Trend
The implementation of a series of supervision measures has promoted the gradual standardization of tax administration in the live streaming industry, and the industry has shown a positive development trend. More and more internet celebrity anchors have realized the importance of paying taxes in accordance with the law and took the initiative to conduct tax self-inspection and standardize declaration procedures; live streaming platforms and MCN institutions have successively improved their internal management systems, strengthened the tax-related management of their anchors, and eliminated irregular operations. While conducting strict supervision, tax authorities have optimized tax services, reduced the tax burden on low and middle-income anchors, and guided the industry to develop in a standardized manner. Today, traffic is no longer an "immunity card", and compliant operation has become the consensus of anchors and platforms. A market environment of tax fairness is gradually taking shape, which will promote the live streaming industry to get rid of irregularities and achieve high-quality and sustainable development.
