What is the specific meaning of tax evasion and tax saving? Traditionally, people often combine tax evasion with tax evasion, which is called tax evasion. In fact, there is a qualitative difference between the two. Conceptually speaking, tax evasion means that taxpayers deliberately forge, alter, conceal, destroy account books and vouchers, list more expenses or less income in account books, or make false tax returns, thus failing to pay or underpay taxes; Tax evasion means that taxpayers fail to comply with tax laws and regulations intentionally and fail to pay or underpay taxes. The main difference between tax evasion and tax evasion is: 1. Subjective differences. Tax evasion is a deliberate act, the purpose of which is to evade state taxes, which is fraudulent; Tax evasion is negligence, and some even accidents. 2. Different objective behaviors. "Tax evasion can be done by concealing taxable income or taxable transaction items, failing to provide tax returns, forging transaction items, and falsely reporting the correct amount" (see IBFD International Tax Dictionary), which is an external manifestation of subjective intention, while there is no intentional act or omission in tax evasion. The reason is that taxpayers generally don't know or are unfamiliar with the tax law and financial system, or are careless in their work, so they misuse the tax rate, omit taxable items and pay less taxes. 3. The legal consequences are different. Tax evasion is a criminal act, and the perpetrator does not need to bear criminal responsibility, but it should be handled appropriately. Tax Avoidance The explanation of the United Nations tax expert group is that tax avoidance is a relatively unclear concept, and it is difficult to define it in generally accepted terms. Generally speaking, tax avoidance can be considered as taxpayers taking advantage of some loopholes or ambiguities in the law to arrange their own affairs in order to reduce the tax they should bear. Although tax avoidance may be considered immoral, the methods used in tax avoidance are legal and not fraudulent. Tax avoidance is a manifestation of the imperfection of the current tax law and its unique defects, which shows the imperfection of the tax law. Tax authorities often take corresponding measures to modify and amend the current tax law according to the defects of tax avoidance. Therefore, the study of tax avoidance can further improve the national tax system and contribute to the progress and development of social economy. Some researchers believe that there are actually three situations of tax avoidance, namely, legal; Not illegal; What seems legal is actually illegal. Legal tax avoidance, also known as tax saving, means that taxpayers optimize their tax payment schemes by arranging their business structure and trading activities according to the government's tax policy, so as to reduce the tax burden and obtain legitimate tax benefits. This should not be opposed in taxation, but can only be protected. Non-illegal tax avoidance, this kind of tax avoidance behavior is often due to the loopholes in the tax law itself, so that taxpayers can make use of the imperfection of the tax law to make arrangements conducive to reducing tax burden. This kind of tax avoidance will make the national tax revenue suffer losses, but because there is no legal basis, the tax bureau can not give legal sanctions like tax evasion. Only by perfecting the tax law can we eliminate loopholes. Superficial legality is illegal tax avoidance, which is an illegal act of tax evasion by fraudulent means under the cover of legality. This situation is quite common in international taxation. Generally speaking, it is also a fact that tax evasion is carried out in a legal name by using different provisions and preferential policies of the tax law and through "affiliated" and "fictional institutions". Only by strengthening the inspection of this kind of tax avoidance, once the truth is found out, it should be punished as tax evasion. Tax saving As mentioned above, tax saving generally refers to choosing the one with the lightest tax burden or the most tax incentives among various profit-making economic activities in order to achieve the purpose of reducing tax payment. In the tax law, taxpayers can choose the application of some clauses, which should be taxed at a lower tax rate, and can get regular tax reduction or exemption, and investors can choose favorable clauses. In addition, in practice, enterprises can also reduce the current tax burden or delay tax payment by controlling the realization time of income. Delaying tax payment is like obtaining an interest-free loan. Generally speaking, the main forms of tax saving are: 1. In the process of enterprise formation, there are often many ways to choose from. In different selection methods, for business operators, they can often get different benefits, and there is a tax problem in these benefits. For example, for the parent company, whether to set up a subsidiary or a branch, the interests are very different. A subsidiary is an independent legal person in form, accounting for its profits and losses independently, while a branch is not an independent legal person, and its profits and losses should be consolidated with the holding company (parent company) for tax purposes. Generally speaking, if the established company can make a profit from the beginning, it is more advantageous to set up a subsidiary; It will be more beneficial to form a company if it loses money in the initial stage of operation. 2. Realize tax saving through financial planning. In the process of accounting, enterprises choose accounting methods to reduce their tax obligations. For example, "first in first out", "last in first out" or other methods can be used in material procurement cost accounting; There is an optimal scheme to choose the depreciation method of fixed assets of enterprises, so that the profits realized by enterprises in the current year or across years can meet the requirements of tax saving. 3. Use the preferential tax clauses in the tax law to save taxes. In many countries, in order to ensure the uniformity and flexibility of tax laws and make taxes better meet the needs of economic situation, the state has stipulated many preferential tax measures. Reasonable use of these preferential terms can achieve the purpose of saving taxes. The legislative intention is to determine the distinction standard between tax saving and tax avoidance. Tax saving is to reduce the tax obligation by means that the law does not attempt to include; On the other hand, tax avoidance takes advantage of the scope that the law tries to cover but fails to cover for one reason or another. The distinction between "illegal" and "legal" depends entirely on a country's domestic law, which does not exceed the unified standard of domestic law, so there will be such a phenomenon: illegal behavior in country A may be legal behavior in country B, so it is difficult to judge which situation is illegal from a detached international perspective except the specific laws of various countries. Not all countries clearly distinguish between tax evasion and tax avoidance. In addition, tax avoidance and tax evasion can also be transformed into each other in some cases. It can be seen that the concept of tax avoidance is more flexible. Since tax avoidance is legal, why do you want to oppose it? In fact, the legitimacy of tax avoidance is legal; As far as economic impact is concerned, the difference between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is meaningless, because they both reduce fiscal revenue and distort the level of economic activity. Therefore, the deep-seated reason of anti-tax avoidance comes from economy rather than law. Others put forward that whether it violates the legal intention is the dividing line: those behaviors that violate the legal intention and achieve the purpose of reducing tax burden before tax are the anti-tax avoidance goals; And those tax avoidance (that is, tax saving) that conform to the original intention of the law do not constitute the object of anti-tax avoidance. Many enterprises or companies, in order to reduce expenses, will cheat or evade taxes on their accounts, which is illegal. If the circumstances are serious, not only must the tax be paid, but the state will also punish or sentence to fixed-term imprisonment for many times. In short, accountants must not evade taxes.