China’s Legal Landscape

One of our China lawyers, Dan Harris, was recently interviewed regarding China law and lawyering in general in this article, entitled Legal Landscape. Large portions of this interview are China relevant, particularly for foreign companies doing business in China, and so if you are one of those companies, we recommend you read it. The below is an excerpt from the article and we urge you to read the whole thing.

Looking at your practice area, what has been the biggest development in the last five years?

Things that American companies could get away with in China five years ago, they can’t anymore. China now has sophisticated tax and tax collection systems. China has gotten a flavor of what it means to collect taxes, and they love it. Like all governments, they want your money. And if you’re not going to pay them the money that they believe they are owed, they will make your life miserable beyond any conception of the word miserable.

Americans are getting in major trouble for this. We see it in two areas constantly.

An American company will hire, say, three “independent contractors” in China. The Chinese government will come to the American company three years later and say, “What are you doing? You have three employees but haven’t paid employer taxes for the last three years or withheld employee taxes. We’re going to say that you’re doing business in China because you have these three employees, so you owe company income taxes. And by the way, employer taxes and benefit taxes equal, like, 40% of what you paid them in salary for the last three years. And we’re going to charge you interest and a penalty. And if you don’t pay, we will shut down your business here and we may not let you leave the country.”

“What? They’re just independent contractors,” the Americans argue. Well, guess what? If they’re not your cleaning person, or your plumber who’s coming to fix your sink for two days, and you’re paying them money and they don’t have a company, they are your employees.

The other thing is that Americans will set up a company in China that sells a service or a product back to the parent company in the United States. They set it up so that the company in China makes no profit. It is called transfer pricing. But the Chinese government will come in and say, “People don’t run businesses for no profit. We’re going to impute a 30% profit, and you need to pay the last three years’ taxes on that plus penalties, plus interest.” And the Americans freak out.

What you should do is bring on accountants who understand transfer pricing and they will figure out that the typical profit margin is, say, 6-10%, so maybe they put you down for 8%. The Chinese tax authorities will look at that and won’t mess with you. But if they have to come in and you’re making no profit, they don’t start at 8%. They come in at 30%.

That’s how governments always work. Americans need to start realizing that what American companies got away with five years ago, that era is no more. And the things Chinese companies down the street are getting away with? Well, you’re not a Chinese company.

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We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.