As the saying goes, a tank of gas is half a tank of tax. Through tax evasion, illegal refined oil operating companies can save a lot of “costs” and gain a huge advantage in the selling price of oil products.
And behind this is a huge gray industry chain that you can’t imagine.
Recently, the case of a gang that falsely issued special value-added tax invoices in the petrochemical field, jointly participated by the taxation and public security departments, was successfully solved.
This case is a gang case involving a refined oil distribution company that changed invoices and falsely issued special value-added tax invoices, involving Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Jilin, Shandong, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shenzhen, and Hainan It covers 26 provinces (cities) and more than 600 enterprises, with a case value estimated to exceed 50 billion yuan.
In the early morning of June 16, the task force simultaneously carried out centralized network closing operations in 9 places including Anhui and Jiangsu, dispatching a total of 209 tax cadres and police. Removed 6 criminal dens for falsely issuing VAT invoices, seized 102 corporate seals and legal person seals, more than 10,000 accounting vouchers and financial books, more than 10 million yuan in cash, frozen 125 accounts, and frozen funds of more than 270 million yuan, arresting criminals There are 34 suspects.
50 billion yuan, you can’t believe it?
False invoices are so profitable that many illegal oil companies don’t even sell oil and can make money just by issuing invoices.
In August 2019, the Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court held a public hearing on a particularly serious crime of falsely issuing special value-added tax invoices and tax evasion.
From January 2015 to December 2016, in order to obtain illegal benefits, the defendant Liu and others frequently opened and canceled companies, made false contracts, fabricated purchase and sale chains, and changed By using methods such as the product name of the input and output invoices, without any real sales happening, the system loopholes in the third phase of the tax golden tax, which has not been launched online, were used to change the received input special value-added tax invoices with the product name of chemical products to the product name of refined oil. The method is to falsely issue special VAT invoices.
Liu found that in order to evade the collection and administration of national consumption tax, some local oil refining companies in China sold their oil products as chemical products.
In the subsequent distribution process, this part of oil products can enter the oil sales channel only by obtaining a special VAT invoice for input refined oil products and finally evading consumption tax.
So Liu began to plan and implement the special VAT invoices that falsely issued input items as the product names of chemical products, then changed the product name to falsely issue output invoices for refined oil, and made money from the process. The so-called “invoice change business” is to collect the invoicing fee.
According to verification by the public security organs, this case involves 51 oil product operating companies in 11 provinces and cities including Liaoning, Beijing, and Shanghai, and the amount involved is as high as 4.569 billion yuan. , the defendant made illegal profits totaling approximately 115 million yuan by falsely issuing special value-added tax invoices, resulting in a loss of approximately 1.6 billion yuan in national consumption tax.
Many illegally operated gas stations have achieved a “crushing” of oil sales prices compared to legally operated gas stations through tax evasion.
In order to achieve this goal, illegal enterprises use all possible means.
01 Direct ticketless sales
According to regulations of the State Administration of Taxation, local refineries are required to issue invoices when selling refined oil products. In fact, tax evasion by some local refining and chemical companies by selling oil without tickets has always been a problem in the industry. It is simple and crude to evade taxes without issuing invoices.
02 Sales by changing invoices
Sales of refined oil are subject to consumption tax, but if you sell It is a chemical product, such as mixed aromatics, asphalt, light cycle oil, chemical light hydrocarbons, etc., which can be exempted from consumption tax.
As a result, some oil product operating companies sell refined oil, but issue invoices for chemical products. This means that on its books, it sells tax-free chemical products, but in fact it still sells refined oil.
Invoice-changing sales are not just about evading consumption tax. In fact, part of the value-added tax is also lost because of this separate payment method.
What’s more, there are some commonly known as “traders” who do not produce any oil products themselves, but earn the difference by linking buyers with local refinery transactions.
Some local refineries evade taxes through traders and can make hundreds of millions a year just by evading taxes.
03 Left hand, right hand
Refined oil consumption tax is a tax levied during the production process. In other words, if you buy gasoline and sell gasoline, you do not need to pay consumption tax. But if you buy crude oil and sell gasoline, you need to pay consumption tax.
The complete chain of tax evasion in the industry is that local refining company A sells crude oil to trader B who is qualified to wholesale refined oil products, and B then sells this batch of crude oil with fuel oil bills. Sold to local refinery company C. After Company C purchases this batch of crude oil in the name of fuel oil and processes it, it can sell gasoline and diesel with bills for low-tax or no-tax products such as asphalt and aromatics.
This link can also be reversed. In this way, two local smelting companies help each other evade taxes. This is also a strange phenomenon in the refined oil industry, where two companies sell crude oil to each other through traders.
Some companies use shell companies as their own traders to sell their crude oil and then buy it back as fuel oil. Equivalent to selling with the left hand and buying with the right hand. After doing this, the crude oil in your hands becomes refined oil that can be sold without tickets.
There is also an operation of “gas ticket separation”, where the gas is sold to a company that does not require tickets, and then the tickets are sold to the ticket seller intermediary. This approach is more difficult to regulate.
Petrochemicals can make money quickly and make huge profits by making fake bills. Related illegal activities have always been rampant.
According to data from the Development Research Center of the State Council, the consumption tax payable in the refined oil industry in 2015 was 520.8 billion yuan, and the actual consumption tax paid was 417.1 billion yuan, of which 103.7 billion yuan of consumption tax was unknown.
In response to this situation, the State Administration of Taxation adopted a three-sided attack of “special tax inspection”, “double attack” and “100-city battle” to plug the loopholes:
In 2012, the State Administration of Taxation issued the “Announcement on Policy Issues Related to Consumption Tax” (State Administration of Taxation Announcement No. 47 of 2012) specifically to plug the loopholes in the petrochemical industry that “change bills” to evade consumption tax;
In April 2017, the Inspection Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation issued the “Notice on Carrying out Tax Inspections on Some Local Refining Enterprises”, and the tax police jointly investigated and handled “voucher changing” cases in the petrochemical industry. This is the beginning;
In 2018, the State Administration of Taxation issued the “Announcement on Issues Concerning the Collection and Administration of Consumption Tax on Refined Oils” (State Administration of Taxation Announcement No. 1 of 2018) , stipulating that refined oil production and distribution companies use corresponding refined oil invoice issuance modules, further blocking the policy of local refining companies using commercial companies to “change invoices” to evade consumption tax;
On April 11, 2018, the State Administration of Taxation, the Ministry of Public Security, the General Administration of Customs and the People’s Bank of China jointly deployed in Beijing a special operation to crack down on fraudulent export tax refunds and false issuance of special value-added tax invoices, and arranged for the 2018 crackdown on tax fraud and Special action mission for false issuance of value-added tax invoices;
On August 22, 2018, the four ministries and commissions held another meeting in Beijing to jointly deploy a two-year crackdown on the illegal crime of falsely issuing value-added tax invoices and fraudulently obtaining export tax refunds. Special operation;
On August 14, 2019, public security agencies across the country held a video conference on the deployment of the “Hundred Cities Battle” operation to combat tax-related crimes. Meng Qingfeng, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Public Security, emphasized at the meeting , “Carry out the ‘Hundred Cities Campaign’ to crack down on tax-related crimes and resolutely fight the battle to curb tax-related crimes”…
In 2012, the State Administration of Taxation issued the “Consumption Tax Relevant Policies” “Announcement on the Problem” (State Administration of Taxation Announcement No. 47 of 2012) is specifically designed to plug the loopholes in the petrochemical industry’s “change of invoices” to evade consumption tax;
In April 2017, The Inspection Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation issued the “Notice on Carrying out Tax Inspections on Some Local Refining Enterprises”, and the tax police jointly investigated and handled the “voucher changing” cases in the petrochemical industry;
In 2018, the State Administration of Taxation also issued the “Announcement on Issues Concerning the Collection and Management of Refined Oil Consumption Tax” (State Administration of Taxation Announcement No. 1 of 2018), which stipulates that refined oil production and distribution companies use corresponding refined oil invoice issuance modules. In terms of policy, we will further prevent local refining companies from using commercial companies to “change bills” to evade consumption tax;
On April 11, 2018, the State Administration of Taxation, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Customs The General Administration and the People’s Bank of China jointly deployed in Beijing a special operation to crack down on fraudulent export tax refunds and false issuance of special value-added tax invoices, and arranged the tasks of the special operation to crack down on tax fraud and false issuance in 2018;
On August 22, 2018, the four ministries and commissions held another meeting in Beijing to jointly deploy a two-year special operation to crack down on the illegal crime of falsely issuing VAT invoices and fraudulently obtaining export tax refunds;
2019 On August 14, public security agencies across the country held a video conference on the deployment of the “Hundred Cities Campaign” to crack down on tax-related crimes. Meng Qingfeng, deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Security, emphasized at the meeting that “we will carry out the ‘Hundred Cities Campaign’ to crack down on tax-related crimes in depth and resolutely curb them.” “Tough battle against tax-related crimes”…
It can be seen that the State Administration of Taxation is further tightening the refined oil invoice policy year by year and increasing its crackdown. If the criminals do not stop, Just wait to be caught. </p
