Beijing To Curb Tax Evasion In Live-streaming Sector

The mainland’s tax regulator said on Wednesday that it will crack down on tax evasion in China’s booming live-streaming industry, and will start requiring online platforms to report live-streamers' identities, income and profits every six months.

The State Taxation Administration said on its website that live-streamers and live-streaming platforms should compete fairly and fulfil their legal obligations to pay taxes.

"Live-streaming has played an important role in recent years in promoting flexible employment," it said. "At the same time, there are problems such as poor management by live-streaming platforms, irregular commercial marketing behaviour [and] tax evasion, which impede the industry's healthy development and damage social fairness and justice."

Live-streaming has surged in popularity in China, with millions of influencers running channels on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, Kuaishou, and other short video platforms, where they talk about topics including lifestyle, food, games and travel.

Regulators have already targeted some of these personalities for tax evasion, including a few who sell products via live-stream.

Huang Wei, an internet celebrity known as Viya, and for her sales prowess, was fined 1.34 billion yuan last December for hiding personal income and other offences in 2019 and 2020. (Reuters)