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China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

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11–20 of 25 posts

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#11
post #2

you are supposed to receive a stack of fapiao of equivalent face value. In the past 9 months I've never received more than one of these fapiao , if they even gave it to me at all. Also, the prizes are pretty small, enough that there isn't that much of an incentive to ask for these "lottery tickets". The largest "prize" i heard about (because i've never seen anyone win) was about the equivalent of $6 USD.

It used to be more common in the past: you buy something, and the fapiao (certified tax receipt) would include some sort of scratch off thing that was like a lottery; so you had some incentive to collect your fapiao and preventing the department store from low balling their taxes. Store owners are not supposed to recycle unclaimed fapiaos, that is definitely illegal, and many companies who follow the law to the lette…

If you're getting only 2 or 3K RMB per month, I think that's seriously robbery, even if you do have the ability to claim expenses on everything else. That's what only new graduates get, and low-level Chinese university new grads at that. I have a friend who just moved from IBM to Microsoft recently (we're both in China). Microsoft definitely pays more than that. I have no idea where you're getting this 2 or 3K number?

To the gp, I usually don't get fapiao if I don't ask for it, but it sometimes comes. I always get it if I ask for it, or they offer me a Pepsi on the house or something to avoid giving me fapiao. So it's always in play, as far as I can see.

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#12
With small tweaks i think all of the shortcomings mentioned here can be taken care of. e.g. provide much larger tax rebates as lottery instead of actual money. These rebates are much more beneficial to the rich who spend the most and are the ones who evade taxes the most.

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#14
post #4

>>China’s clever solution is to make every fapiao a lottery ticket. That's not "China's clever solution" but quite common. They had that in Mexico already more than 10 years ago when I lived there (the cash register in stores whould print out these "lottery numbers" onto the receipt). The fapiao in the picture is from Guangdong, elsewhere I have seen only 100 kuai with scratch off fields, not ten kuai.

Taiwan also has a variation of this, being an even closer source of inspiration than Mexico for China.

It's crazy - the cleaning staff at my dormitory was absolutely obsessive about fishing each one of them out of the trash, even though the chance of winning is terrible...a good indicator of how little some people's time is still worth, sadly.

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#15
post #8

In Greece they crowdsource the tax enforcement by requiring everyone to submit a stack (to a certain amount of euros) of purchase receipts with their tax filing. This is to ensure that customers always ask for receipts, so that stores always enter everything into the register (which goes into the store's tax filing).

It's a stupid measure since they never reward the desired behavior.

Also: are you always required to fill your taxes? That's stupid. Why would you do that if you have a normal job with a wage - they already have all the necessary information, why make you do extra work?

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#16

With small tweaks i think all of the shortcomings mentioned here can be taken care of. e.g. provide much larger tax rebates as lottery instead of actual money. These rebates are much more beneficial to the rich who spend the most and are the ones who evade taxes the most.

Then most of the ordinary consumers(people) will confuse and lose the motivation to ask for this receipt. Because a lot of Chinese people don't, don't need and don't know how to fill tax return.

The government don't want to do that as well, because if then they are indirectly educate people there is a concept of tax return exists, which is most people don't aware of. That is a big chunk of money government steal away from people every year.

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be more common in the past: you buy something, and the fapiao (certified tax receipt) would include some sort of scratch off thing that was like a lottery; so you had some incentive to collect your fapiao and preventing the department store from low balling their taxes. Store owners are not supposed to recycle unclaimed fapiaos, that is definitely illegal, and many companies who follow the law to the lette…

If you're getting only 2 or 3K RMB per month, I think that's seriously robbery, even if you do have the ability to claim expenses on everything else. That's what only new graduates get, and low-level Chinese university new grads at that. I have a friend who just moved from IBM to Microsoft recently (we're both in China). Microsoft definitely pays more than that. I have no idea where you're getting this 2 or 3K number…

> If you're getting only 2 or 3K RMB per month, I think that's seriously robbery

Agreed. Even english teachers get 8k minimum, AND they often have the majority of their expenses (rent, utilities, food allowances, etc) covered.

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#18
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be more common in the past: you buy something, and the fapiao (certified tax receipt) would include some sort of scratch off thing that was like a lottery; so you had some incentive to collect your fapiao and preventing the department store from low balling their taxes. Store owners are not supposed to recycle unclaimed fapiaos, that is definitely illegal, and many companies who follow the law to the lette…

If you're getting only 2 or 3K RMB per month, I think that's seriously robbery, even if you do have the ability to claim expenses on everything else. That's what only new graduates get, and low-level Chinese university new grads at that. I have a friend who just moved from IBM to Microsoft recently (we're both in China). Microsoft definitely pays more than that. I have no idea where you're getting this 2 or 3K number…

I read that as "the employer pays you 2K or 3K RMB less than what it otherwise would" , not "the employer pays only 2K or 3K RMB per month."

Re: China: Crowdsourced tax enforcement

#20
post #8

In Greece they crowdsource the tax enforcement by requiring everyone to submit a stack (to a certain amount of euros) of purchase receipts with their tax filing. This is to ensure that customers always ask for receipts, so that stores always enter everything into the register (which goes into the store's tax filing).

> This is to ensure that customers always ask for receipts, so that stores always enter everything into the register (which goes into the store's tax filing).

It's fairly easy for a store to use a register that has nothing to do with the store's tax filing.

Receipt matching would defeat that, but only if stores submitted their receipts.

However, you can use customer receipts to estimate a store's revenue, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a register is involved.

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