Tax compliance is the minimum cost for enterprises, "said Yang Li, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Yuanfeng Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as" Yuanfeng Technology "). In her opinion, although tax compliance is a cost, it is actually the smallest cost for businesses. Enterprises have not done a solid job in taxation, and the taxes they think they have "saved" are not on the same level as the additional taxes, late fees, credit downgrades, and customer review points that may arise if problems arise; On the contrary, it may bring greater operational risks and more adverse effects to the enterprise.

Similar to Yang Li's views, Zhou Yongchong, the Chief Financial Officer of Guangdong Tuosida Technology Co., Ltd. (300607. SZ) (hereinafter referred to as "Tuosida"), often mentions to the company's chairman that compliance management is the "foundation" for enterprises to participate in the synergy of the Greater Bay Area industrial chain, and they need to "train their internal skills" to standardize internal governance, especially tax compliance management.

The National Tax Work Conference held in January 2026 repeatedly mentioned compliance related content, with the main focus on maintaining the rule of law and fairness, strengthening compliance management, and the important lever of deepening the implementation of the "Strong Foundation Project" for tax and fee management under the conditions of digital transformation.

The importance of tax compliance in business operations is constantly increasing, especially for technology-based enterprises with high R&D investment intensity, multiple applicable tax policies, and fast revenue growth. The term 'tax compliance' is becoming increasingly common between tax departments and enterprises. Yang Li believes that there are two main reasons: on the one hand, in recent years, tax policies have become increasingly stable and transparent, and the standards and caliber of policies such as R&D expense deduction, advanced manufacturing industry deduction, and value-added tax law are very transparent. This makes science and technology innovation enterprises more confident and willing to include long-term investment in R&D and automation transformation in their plans. On the other hand, as a company develops to a certain stage, compliance will naturally become a mandatory requirement. For example, the company is a national high-tech enterprise and a specialized, refined, and new small and medium-sized enterprise in Guangdong Province. It is promoting the project designation of overseas mainstream car companies, and customer factory audits and subsequent capital operations consider tax compliance as a threshold.

Li Hua, director of the Tax Economics Research Center at Shandong University, told the Economic Observer that from a macro perspective, tax compliance is of irreplaceable importance to the country, enterprises, and market environment. At the national level, tax compliance can ensure fiscal revenue and social stability, empowering the construction of a unified national market. Tax compliance is a prerequisite for the full and timely receipt of national tax revenue, directly supporting the operation of core national functions such as public services (such as education, healthcare, transportation), infrastructure construction, and national defense and security. Tax compliance construction can maintain tax order, curb illegal activities such as tax evasion, avoid "bad money driving out good money", ensure fair implementation of tax policies, and safeguard the effectiveness of national economic regulation tools.

Full process of tax compliance

Taxes, like labor, raw materials, and equipment, are rigid expenditures that run through the entire business cycle, "said Li Hua." They require pre planning, precise accounting, and rigid execution

Accurately grasping policies: technology-based enterprises involve many tax policies, such as income tax incentives for high-tech enterprises, R&D additional deductions, advanced manufacturing additional deductions, etc. Enterprises need to carefully verify the applicable conditions and standards of each policy. Be able to manage invoice fees: verify the authenticity of each input and verify the authenticity of the business; Output items shall be issued based on actual transactions, and electronic invoices shall be filed in a standardized manner. Compliance requires early entry, and tax compliance audits must be conducted before signing and recording major contracts involving tax clauses, large expense expenditures, and asset disposals. The information should be kept complete and mutually verifiable. The project proposal, work schedule, requisition form, and cost allocation basis need to have a complete compliance chain.

The tax internal control management approach of Tuosida can be summarized as "three lists". In Zhou Yongchong's view, tax compliance is not just about timely declaration and full payment of taxes: on the one hand, it is necessary to fully understand the policies. As a listed company, the policy dividends that should be enjoyed must be stable, provided that the entire process is compliant; On the other hand, we need to strengthen invoice management and rely on digital tools to hold the invoice checkpoint; Related party transactions, tax related information reporting, tax declaration and other matters must withstand verification. The tax internal control team has identified more than 30 risk points throughout the entire chain of research and development, production, accounting, and declaration, forming a list, assigning positions and responsibilities, and conducting regular self inspections item by item.

Tax compliance is not solely the responsibility of the finance department, "said Zhou Yongchong. The compliance chain runs through procurement, production, and sales, and also radiates to upstream and downstream partners. Tuosida's new projects all promote pre control of industry finance and taxation integration: instead of waiting for the business to be settled before being accounted for by the finance department afterwards, the company's tax team is involved in the project initiation stage to jointly finalize the transaction structure, contract terms, and settlement arrangements.

Zhou Yongchong said that with the development of enterprises, they have to face more compliance issues, longer chains, and finer requirements, and tax compliance naturally becomes a normalized management requirement for the entire process and chain.From the development practice of Tuosida, there are five main factors that promote its emphasis on tax compliance: firstly, the expansion of research and development projects year by year, which can enjoy a 30% increase in research and development expense deduction projects in recent years. While enterprises are digging deeper into policy dividends, they also put forward higher requirements for compliance management; The second is the overseas layout of enterprises, which brings cross-border tax risks due to differences in domestic and foreign tax systems and tax rules; Thirdly, the identity of the listed entity requires both tax incentives and compliance control; Fourthly, the digitization of invoices requires pre identification of tax related risks such as input and output codes; Fifthly, as the "chain owner" of the industrial robot industry chain, enterprises extend compliance control to upstream and downstream, driving the collaborative standardization of the industry chain.

However, companies also face many challenges on the road to tax compliance. Yang Li believes that the challenges mainly lie in three levels.

Firstly, the business and finance have not yet been truly integrated. The R&D engineer's goal is to make the product, but it is difficult to actively figure out how to fill in the work hour sheet to justify the additional deduction; When signing contracts for procurement and sales, tax related clauses are often not at the forefront of attention. So the key is to embed compliance requirements into the business process itself, design the fields in the project approval system, material requisition form, and contract template well, so that people can "follow the process to comply", from relying on people to monitor, to relying on processes and systems for backup.

The second is the granularity of data standardization and organization. Additional deductions are not just a matter of filling in a number when declaring. Each item in the project proposal, work schedule, material requisition form, and cost allocation basis must be kept and explained clearly; Invoices must be traceable throughout their entire lifecycle, from issuing, verifying authenticity, checking for duplicates, to recording and archiving.

The third is the grasp of policy boundaries. Ordinary financial personnel may not be able to determine the tax classification of certain businesses and whether they can enjoy preferential treatment. We will do this in two parts: one is to regularly hold tax training, with business colleagues participating together, to give the front-end a basic compliance awareness; the other is to proactively ask the tax department about things that are uncertain, "Yang Li said.

Put service ahead of risk

The National Tax Work Conference held on January 28, 2026 mentioned in summarizing the work for 2025 that tax compliance management should be improved in quality and efficiency. The supervision of key areas such as refined oil, export tax rebates, and internet celebrities continues to deepen, and the investigation and punishment of tax related illegal and criminal activities have become more effective. The compliance of business entities with tax laws has significantly improved. Through the "bank tax interaction", small and micro enterprises that pay taxes with integrity have obtained nearly 3 trillion yuan in credit loans, and the legal and fair tax ecology continues to grow.

During the deployment of the 2026 work plan, it was proposed to highlight the guidance of compliance and continue to build a market-oriented, rule of law, and international tax and business environment. Adhere to integrating compliance management into optimizing services, and enhance compliance awareness through the convenience of compliance.

The idea of the tax department at Songshan Lake in Dongguan is to prioritize services over risks.

The idea set by Lei Qing, the head of the Tax Service Department of the Dongguan Songshan Lake High tech Industrial Development Zone Tax Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation, for the bureau's enterprise assistance service team is to "translate" the tax policies and declaration standards in the documents into actions that enterprises can understand and take action on. Enterprises are not unwilling to comply, sometimes they don't understand and don't have time, "she said." What the tax department needs to do is to get through this layer of conversion

Lei Qing found that the Songshan Lake High tech Zone is mainly composed of R&D light asset enterprises, with many start-ups and youth enterprises. Some start-ups do not have dedicated finance, and the "first threshold" for compliance often relies on external support.

She said that the most concentrated difficulty for science and technology innovation enterprises is how to clarify the "R&D account". The criteria for identifying high-tech enterprises and deducting R&D expenses are not completely consistent. The types of enterprise projects are diverse, and the collection of expenses is already complex. How to divide the working hours of R&D and production personnel, and how to share the depreciation of shared equipment, each item needs to be carefully considered. If these details are not handled properly, it will not only affect the accuracy of preferential treatment, but also bury tax risks. The other end is tax payment credit. Some companies do not attach importance to it in the early stage, and only know after deducting points, and only become anxious after losing points; Some still cling to the old understanding that 'compliance means spending an extra short-term management cost', with insufficient awareness of actively repairing credit, often waiting until declaration or verification to focus on remedial measures.

Lei Qing said, "Compliance is not something that needs attention only when problems arise

In addition, the tax department of Songshan Lake has also established a "Three Teachers to Assist Enterprises" team, which is responsible for liaison and coordination, handling appeals, policy push, risk reminder, and heartwarming assistance in navigation; In conjunction with the "Kunpeng Plan" launched by Dongguan City, and in collaboration with the Songshan Lake Management Committee, the Municipal Association of Listed Companies, and relevant functional departments, we jointly organized "Kunpeng Tianyu" Songhu Salon and other enterprise assistance activities. We interpreted compliance policies and exchanged listing experiences with listed and reserve companies, holding a total of 26 events and serving nearly 2000 enterprises.

In addition, the tax department has also established a normalized mechanism of "tax enterprise face-to-face". If the opinions raised by the enterprise can be answered on the spot, they will be answered on the spot. If they cannot be answered, a ledger will be established, a dedicated person will track and close the loop, and the management committee, district party committee, and industry association will work together to respond. In addition, the tax department has also collaborated with Shenzhen Guangming and Longgang Taxation to carry out policy interpretation and demand service activities for "dual city linkage tax assistance development".

Lei Qing still remembers that a company mentioned in a special training on tax payment credit that the tax department usually pushes the basic score points, loss risk points, repair and improvement points of the company in a targeted manner. This "point-to-point reminder and preventive correction" credit management service mechanism is very effective.

Costs And Benefits

The real reason why Yuanfeng Technology is determined to systematize tax compliance is the collection of research and development expenses.

The R&D personnel of this automotive electronics company account for 40% of the total number of employees, and it is common for one engineer to participate in two or three projects at the same time. How to cut working hours and how to allocate depreciation for shared equipment? In the past, it used to rely solely on the "reverse squeeze" at the end of the financial month, with the total amount first and then "allocated" to the project.

Yang Li told the Economic Observer that as the company continues to expand into the field of intelligent automotive spare parts, research and development investment has been increasing year by year. Some of the previous crude practices have revealed new risks. Once it is unclear which project and which expense are involved in the subsequent review, the application for additional deduction of research and development expenses may be affected.

So in the past two years, Yuanfeng Technology has developed a research and development management system: every project is imported into the system from the beginning of project approval on the product side; Each R&D engineer's personnel expenses related to the project are collected in the system according to the project and reported according to the established working hours; The system accurately calculates input, output, cost collection and details by project.

Yang Li said, "This is no longer just about tax compliance, it's already managing the project itself

After the system was launched, a normalized policy communication channel was also established between Yuanfeng Technology and the tax department of Songshan Lake. The tax department of Songshan Lake, in conjunction with the dynamics of the company's research and development projects, helps to interpret the collection criteria for items such as labor costs and depreciation expenses, and points out the error prone points in advance for declaration.

Communication with the tax department of Songshan Lake is very smooth, and tax related questions can be answered in a timely manner, "Yang Li said.

In the short term, tax compliance has brought cost increases to businesses. Yang Li told the Economic Observer that in the short term, compliance is a tangible investment: the manpower of a dedicated tax team, the construction of a research and development management system, external consulting and training are fixed expenses every year. But tax compliance is actually the smallest cost for enterprises. In the long run, it helps enterprises avoid the major risks that once problems arise, they will affect the long-term development of the enterprise.

Firstly, only when tax compliance is in place, can tax incentives such as additional deductions and deductions be fully enjoyed; Secondly, tax compliance can reduce tax risks and increase operational certainty. Finally, credit is the golden signboard. Customer factory audits, negotiations for cooperation, and tax credit are bonus points.

Yang Li told the Economic Observer that the investment in tax compliance has resulted in the company being able to enjoy tax and fee policy support with peace of mind, accuracy, and standardization in recent years. In 2025, the company will enjoy the policy of additional deduction for research and development expenses, with a deduction amount of approximately 117 million yuan; Enjoy the value-added tax deduction policy for advanced manufacturing enterprises, with a deduction amount of approximately 7.8 million yuan. The company has invested a total of 497 million yuan in research and development in the past three years, with a long return cycle. Policy support can directly supplement the research and development cash flow.

Zhou Yongchong said that in the short term, there is indeed investment in corporate compliance. Establishing a tax internal control team, creating a list, and strengthening digital and intelligent invoice management all require manpower and management costs. But in the long run, with the participation of the tax team, the transaction model can avoid detours, streamline process nodes in advance, and reduce the cost of rectifying disputes later on. This is more important than simply saving money. In addition, our company values the market impact and financing benefits it brings more, "said Zhou Yongchong. Tax payment credit has become an important consideration for companies to choose partners, and being rated as an A-level taxpayer indicates that tax declaration and payment can withstand compliance tests; Tuosida has been rated as an A-level taxpayer for six consecutive years, which also makes partners more willing to regard them as compliant and reliable partners. Good tax credit also helps with financing credit and reduces information asymmetry between banks and enterprises. So, compliance is not just about spending money, but converting costs into credit assets, which reduces risks in the long run and is more conducive to financing and development.

Li Hua believes that tax compliance can reduce legal and economic risks. Non compliance may result in fines, late fees, tax credit downgrades, and in serious cases, criminal liability may also be involved; Compliance with rules can effectively avoid such losses and ensure the safety of enterprise assets. Tax compliance can enhance market reputation and competitiveness. Good tax credit is an intangible asset for enterprises, which can help them obtain advantages such as bank credit, government project bidding qualifications, and partner trust, thereby enhancing market competitiveness. Tax compliance can ensure business sustainability, comply with policy guidance, avoid business interruptions caused by tax issues (such as account freezing and business restrictions), and provide a stable foundation for corporate strategic planning and long-term development.

(Author Du Tao)