BEIJING, March 15 (TMTPOST)— China is stepping up crackdown on tax evasion as another celebrity was slapped with huge tax fine  of more than 100-million-yuan.

Deng Lun's Image from Visual China

Deng Lun, one of China’s most famous film and television actors born in the 1990s, was ordered to pay RMB106 million (over US$16.6 million) in back taxes, late fees and fines for tax evasion, the Shanghai municipal tax service announced on Tuesday. The big data analysis found that Deng evaded individual income tax totaling RMB476.58 million and saved RMB139.92 million of tax in total between 2019 and2020, by false declarations with fictitious businesses to conceal his incomes, according to the tax authority. The tax authorities will keep strengthening the regulation in the cultural and entertainment sectors, launch inspections on agents and agencies which are alleged to assist for tax fraud and tax dodging, and continue to promote awareness of tax compliance among employees in these sectors, China Central Television (CCTV) cited an official.

“I understood deeply the wrongdoing during the cooperation with tax inspection and accepted all the decisions of the tax regulator. I’m willing to bear all the responsibilities and deal with revelant consequences,” Deng Lun said in an apology letter posted by his Twitter-like Weibo account. Later that day, all of his social media accounts including those at Weibo, TikTok’s Chinese sister app Douyin were suspended.

Experts believed that the recent tax enforcement cases, including Deng Lun’s penalty, showed authorities’ determination about relentless action against tax violations and crimes, and also suggested the effort to clamp down tax crimes in cultural, entertainment and the fast-growing live streaming sector was by no means a temporary bluster, as the long-standing mechanism of tax administration is gradually taking shape, another state media Xinhua News Agency reported.

Last December, Viya, one of most popular livestreamers in China dubbed as ‘Livestreaming Queen’, fined a record of RMB1.34 billion (US$210 million) and her social media accounts were suspended due to tax evasion. A couple of days later,  a total of eight local tax authorities issued their warning to celebrities including livestream stars and asked them to report their tax-related problems and correct them by the end of the year. More than 1,000 livestreamers moved to pay back taxes following the government guidance to tighten tax regulation in the entertainment industry in last September, according to a CCTV report in December.

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