On July 7th, the State Administration of Taxation issued a notice (No. 17 of 2025) on optimizing the pre payment tax declaration of enterprise income tax, which will come into effect on October 1st, 2025.

The image is sourced from the internet

Among them, Article 7 has a significant impact on export business, and the end of the "pay for export" model may become history.

Payment for export "refers to enterprises without import and export rights borrowing the name of a company with import and export rights to export goods.

And this clause specifies that enterprises that export goods through agency (including market procurement trade, foreign trade comprehensive services, etc.) must simultaneously submit the actual entrusted exporter's basic information and export amount information when prepaying the declaration.

If the enterprise fails to accurately report, it will be treated as a self operated method and bear the corresponding amount of enterprise income tax that should be declared and paid.

'Paying for exports' itself does not mean tax fraud. But if there are fictitious transactions or false value-added tax invoices involved in the operation process of "buying, matching, and refunding taxes", it will evolve into an illegal act of defrauding the country of export tax refunds.

In recent years, the State Administration of Taxation and the General Administration of Customs have linked data through methods such as "Golden Tax Phase IV" and "Single Window+Blockchain" to achieve cross validation of export data. Enterprises with high-frequency exports, zero declarations, high tax refunds, and frequent payment behavior have been listed as key monitoring targets.