Discussion About Tax Evasion

Tax Evasion is a crime which harms the tax system in a country. Tax Evasion has special regulation in Criminal Law Article 201 and the definition is improved constantly in legislation and judicature recent years. Especially, due to the publication of No. 7 Amendment of People's Republic of China Criminal Law, Tax Evasion has a further improvement in both theory and practice. However, in the real judicatory practice, there are lots of arguments about how to judge a tax evasion. On one hand, it reflects that we should improve the research of tax evasion further more. On the other hand, it discovers that the legislation in tax evasion has some defect. Therefore, it is very necessary to improve the research of tax evasion in both theory and practice.The article has 4 parts, the details include:1. "Description of Tax Evasion" - which has 2 parts. In the first part, it introduces about inheritances and improvements of legislation and judicature in crimes of tax evasion in new People's Republic of China. From it, we can find that the interior and exterior of tax evasion in our criminal legislation - "experienced the process from general to concrete, from dispersive to unitive". The second part primarily introduced the legislative and judicatory operations about escaping taxing in important countries included America, Russia, German, Japan, and Korea.2. "Criminal Composing of Tax Evasion".This part is exploring the legislative recognition of tax evasion in theory from 3 aspects. (1) Object of Tax Evasion, demonstrates the explanation of object of tax evasion - taxpayer, and the explanation of tax obligor, included these questions about the object of tax evasion is a general object or special object etcetera. (2) Subjective Aspect of Tax Evasion, the subjective aspect of tax evasion is purposively, included direct intent and indirect intent. (3) The objective representation of Tax Evasion is the behavior which acts against the national tax law with illegal measures to avoid or pay less tax.3. Amendments and existing problems of tax evasion in the No. 7 amendment of criminal law. There are 2 parts. The first part introduces the amendments of tax evasion in the No. 7 amendment of criminal law: 1. Changes about concrete amounts of tax evasion. In China, the minimum tax evasion is 10,000 RMB in 1997. This scratch line is obviously too low to work. 2. Made up the legislative vacuum made by "Amount plus Proportion" legislative model. The legislative ideology made in 2000 is continued by the No. 7 amendment of criminal law. The 10,000 RMB and 30% maximum limits in light crime are deleted, which offsets the existing legislative vacuum. 3. "Tax dodging after secondly punished by Tax Authority because of tax evasion" makes up of the amendment of tax evasion. "Tax dodging after secondly punished by Tax Authority because of tax evasion" is actually a subjective malignant unilateral opinion made by criminal legislation, and conduces to an unfair phenomenon. 4. The amendment of tax evasion by using entire enumerative crimes method. The No. 7 amendment of criminal law concludes tax dodging measure by "trickish and deceitful measures", which can make the law of tax evasion satisfy along with the increasing economic development in our country, prevents majorities escaping from punishments, and keeps the precision of the concept of tax evasion. 5. Amendments of multiples of fine. The No. 7 amendment of criminal law deletes the rule about "fine is between 1 to 5 times of the amount of tax evasion", and the fine amount will be decided by the judiciary based on the specific situation of the case. 6. A rule about that the first offender can avoid criminal responsibilities is added. The No. 7 amendment of criminal law stipulates that the first offender will not be claimed against criminal liability as long as it repays the tax and late fee in time.The second part analyzes the problems in the No. 7 amendment of criminal law, included: 1. "Amount Plus Proportion" legislative model is unchanged. The No. 7 amendment of criminal law uses the "Amount plus Proportion" composite standard to criminate a behavior, which has huge demerits in practice and is not efficient to punish tax evasions. 2. Inappropriate regulations in penalties of the obligor. Criminal Law regulates that taxpayers and tax obligors have the same tax evasion behaviors. If these behaviors will lead to the same results, the tax obligors should not have any special services which will conduce to the different penalty to the same tax object. 3. The inappropriate regulation in Criminal Law Article 204 Paragraph 2. The regulation in Criminal Law Article 204 Paragraph 2 is totally different with other regulations in Criminal Law about the number of crimes and related penalties. Meanwhile, it is absolutely different with the theory of the number of crimes and related penalties in criminology.