The following is an analysis of the case of companies A and B suspected of falsely reporting trade methods.
(I) Brief introduction of the case
The inspection department conducted a special inspection on companies A and B. Upon investigation, it was found that companies A and B colluded with each other and falsely reported goods that should have been imported under general trade as bonded e-commerce trade methods by “brushing orders” in order to apply the preferential tax rates of cross-border e-commerce and evade national taxes.
(II) Inspection process
The number of declaration documents for the bonded import model of online shopping is large and the amount is small. The requirements for data and information evidence collection are very heavy. It involves multiple entities such as e-commerce platforms, e-commerce companies, payment platforms, and logistics companies. Among them, many payment platforms and logistics companies are declared in other places, and e-commerce companies may even be overseas companies. It is difficult to implement and verify the authenticity of their declared data with existing regulatory means, which greatly increases the difficulty of customs supervision.
1. Preliminary analysis
The inspection department has visited the main e-commerce sites in the customs area many times, conducted on-site research on the cross-border e-commerce supervision model and operation status, collected data from the e-commerce platforms in the customs area, strengthened communication between departments, and jointly analyzed the import of goods in the customs area. According to the investigation and analysis, the online shopping bonded import model has facilitated enterprises and consumers to the greatest extent. Its smuggling risk is mainly reflected in the false declaration of goods that should be imported under general trade as bonded e-commerce trade methods, so as to apply preferential tax rates and achieve the purpose of evading national taxes.
Its main feature is that smugglers use e-commerce platforms, payment platforms and logistics companies, based on false online shopping user information, to construct false shopping information flow, capital flow and goods flow, transmit false “three orders” data, and create false cross-border e-commerce trade chains. E-commerce goods are falsely delivered, and the goods are actually entrusted by the criminals to logistics companies to directly pick up the goods at the bonded warehouse and then handed over to the domestic cargo owners.
2. Inspection preparation
The inspection department has deeply selected importers, platform companies and logistics companies with large declaration quantities in the customs area to verify the risk analysis ideas. Finally, Company A and Company B, which are relatively risky in the jurisdiction, were selected. Characteristics of Company A: ① It has multiple identities as an e-commerce platform, bonded warehouse, and declaration enterprise; ② It ranks high in the number of declared imports in the customs area; ③ It has its own cross-border e-commerce sales platform; ④ The interface of its own e-commerce platform is rough and the user experience is poor, but the declared import volume is large. Company B is the main cooperative enterprise of Company A. 80% of the goods rights of the imported goods declared by Company A to the customs belong to Company B.
After selecting the enterprise, the inspection department analyzed the logistics order information in the “three orders” declaration information and found that all the logistics orders pushed by Company A to the customs were express orders from China Post. Therefore, an intermediary agency was commissioned to go to China Post to verify the actual consignee and final destination of the goods one by one. After verification, although the consignee and delivery address in the express order are consistent with the customs declaration, the China Post system shows that many of the processing instructions corresponding to the order number are “speed measurement order”, “empty package collection”, “brushing order”, etc., and Company A is suspected of virtual shipment.
At the same time, the inspection department went to the third-party payment company for investigation and research to understand the cooperation model and capital flow between Company A and the payment company. By retrieving the detailed accounts of the funds of the two companies, it was found that the goods sold on Company A’s e-commerce platform did not actually generate transaction amounts, and there was only a push service fee of one yuan per order between the two companies. The push service fee refers to the third-party payment company generating the corresponding payment order information and pushing it to the customs based on the order information provided by Company A. The authenticity of the order information is not reviewed by the third-party payment company, and Company A is solely responsible. It can be seen from this that Company A has an unclear flow of platform sales funds and is suspected of falsifying payment order information.
After preliminary investigation and evidence collection, the inspection department basically determined that Company A had the risk of smuggling imports through bonded e-commerce, and decided to implement a special inspection on Company A and Company B, the actual owner of the goods.
3. Implementation of the inspection
During the on-site inspection, the inspection personnel were divided into two groups and dispatched to Company A and Company B at the same time. The inspection personnel had one-to-one control over the key personnel and computers on the scene to reduce interference in evidence collection. After collecting and sorting out business documents, electronic data records, chat records of business contacts and other materials, key evidence breakthrough points were found in the chat records. The WeChat chat records between the business manager of Company A and the salesperson of Company B showed that the retail goods on the e-commerce platform declared for import to the customs had no actual orderer at all. The orderer information was randomly provided by Company B, and the express parcels sent were all empty parcels without actual goods.
The auditors printed the chat records as soon as possible, and the parties signed and stamped them for confirmation, and took interrogation records of the parties to fix the evidence.
(III) Audit and Disposal
The above evidence confirmed the illegal fact that the person under audit had made virtual shipments. Combined with the previous investigation and evidence collection materials, it closed the chain of evidence that the person under audit had forged the “three orders” information and created false cross-border e-commerce trade behavior. In the end, it was found that Company A and Company B colluded with each other, used other people’s identity information to construct false shopping information flow, capital flow and goods flow, and falsely reported the goods that should have been imported under general trade as smuggled into bonded e-commerce trade. The number of goods involved was 103,978 pieces/boxes, the value of the goods involved was 3.1969 million yuan, and the tax evasion was 355,700 yuan. It was transferred to the anti-smuggling department for handling.