The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Financial decision · 2025
MCN Chuming declared 170 streamers owed zero tax — ¥1261.51w evaded, ¥2200w+ fine
Baoding MCN Chuming declared its 170 streamers paid ¥0 income tax over three years; auditors found ¥12.6m dodged and referred it to prosecutors.
河北楚鸣文化传媒有限公司 · 2025-09-19
What happened
Hebei Chuming Culture Media, a livestream MCN based in Baoding, brought in roughly ¥160 million of income from 2019 to 2021 while recording wage expenses of only about ¥720,000 a year — and declaring that its 170 resident streamers owed no personal income tax whatsoever across all three years.
The State Taxation Administration's Baoding inspection bureau found that the company had had 447 VAT invoices issued for it that did not match real business, with a combined price-tax value of ¥44.638 million, and had underpaid value-added tax, enterprise income tax and other taxes by ¥12.6151 million. It had also failed to withhold ¥3.597 million of its streamers' personal income tax.
On 19 September 2025 the case was published as part of the national crackdown on livestream tax evasion. Chuming was ordered to pay the back tax plus surcharges and a fine of ¥20.1006 million, plus a further ¥2.1582 million for failing to withhold, and the suspected fake-invoice lead was passed to the police and then to the procuratorate for criminal review.
Why it happened
- Declaring zero personal income tax for 170 streamers was not negligence but a footprint — it showed compensation was being routed through invoices instead of reported against the people who earned it.
- Having 447 VAT invoices issued for a business whose wage bill was a fraction of its income let the firm knock its own taxable profit down at the same time it hid its talent's earnings.
- The whole compensation structure was engineered around the invoice, not the streamer, so no single person's tax file ever carried the cost of the income they generated.
The lesson
An MCN's own books are the smoking gun: when the people generating the income are recorded as paying nothing, the tax office reads that as a structure built to hide compensation, not as an accident.
Aftermath
On 19 September 2025 the State Taxation Administration published the Chuming case alongside two other influencer and MCN tax investigations. The company was ordered to pay ¥12.6151 million of underpaid tax plus surcharges and a ¥20.1006 million fine, and a further ¥2.1582 million for failing to withhold its streamers' personal income tax. The suspected fake-invoice lead was referred to the police and then to the procuratorate for criminal review.
Sources
- 网络直播公司（MCN机构）的偷税「生意经」——揭秘河北楚鸣文化传媒有限公司涉税违法案件 — 国家税务总局
- 「头部」主播2年「零报税」；3年收入1.6亿元、旗下170名主播的MCN机构代缴个税却为0……国家税务总局通报：罚! — 每日经济新闻
- 170名主播个税为0!国家税务总局最新公布MCN机构涉税违法案件细节 — 搜狐
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