How does China's platform tax reporting (Decree 810) work?
China's State Council Decree No. 810 (effective June 20, 2025) obliges internet platform enterprises to report the identity and income information of merchants and workers on their marketplaces to the tax administration, quarterly, starting with the October 2025 cycle. For sellers, the consequence is simple: the tax bureau can already see your platform-side revenue, and the gap between that data and your declarations is the single most common trigger for attention.
Key terms: Golden Tax Phase IV refers to the fourth generation of China's tax administration infrastructure; Decree 810 refers to the Regulation on Internet Platform Enterprises' Reporting of Tax-Related Information (effective 2025-06-20); a "risk notice" refers to the letter a tax bureau sends asking you to self-check declared-versus-reported gaps.
What platforms report, and when
- Identity: merchant name, registration numbers, store information;
- Income: settlement revenue per quarter, as the platform's books record it;
- Cadence: quarterly, with the first cycle completed in October 2025;
- Enforcement: a Shanghai platform operator was fined CNY 100,000 in early 2026 for defective reporting that went uncorrected after a rectification order — the pipeline is live, not theoretical.
Does it affect foreign or cross-border sellers?
If you sell through platforms operating in the Chinese market, the platform's reporting covers your store regardless of where you live. Your obligation is unchanged — declare taxable income correctly — but the verification got stronger. Sellers comparing structures across jurisdictions often note this is China's version of a global trend: the EU DAC7 and similar regimes report platform seller data to tax authorities on the same logic.
Declared vs reported: the gap that matters
The reconciliation logic is arithmetic, not judgement: platform-reported settlement minus declared revenue equals an unexplained gap. Gaps have legitimate causes — timing, returns, fees, unrecovered input tax — but they need to be explainable. The practical sequence:
- Step 1 · Pull your own settlement data per store per quarter;
- Step 2 · Set it against declared revenue and inventory the differences with reasons;
- Step 3 · Quantify the unexplained portion — this is your exposure;
- Step 4 · Correct proactively; voluntary fixes before a notice draw lighter treatment.
What sellers ask in practice
Sellers ask whether deleting a store resets anything — it does not; identity and income data already reported stays reported. They ask whether moving payouts to a personal account avoids the numbers — that converts a declaration gap into a concealed-income pattern, the most expensive category in the published record. And they ask what the bureau does with the data — reconciliation first, notices where gaps stay unexplained, escalation only where responses fail. The reporting regime rewards the same behavior it always did: declaring what actually happened.
FAQ
Do I need to do anything for the platform to report me?
No — reporting is the platform's obligation, not yours. Your obligation remains correct declaration.
Where do the reported numbers appear?
With the tax administration, not publicly. Sellers see the effect through risk notices when gaps go unexplained.
Shoushuibao's check engine runs these same comparisons on your own data — free triage in the WeChat mini-program; see FAQ and Pricing.
Run the free check: open WeChat, search the mini-program 守税宝 (ShouShuiBao). International inquiries: bd@intentengine.cn.