Wei Juan (Huang Wei)

Wei Juan (Huang Wei)

Biography

2021: Fine of $210 million for tax evasion

On December 20, 2021, the Tax Bureau of the Hangzhou Chinese e-commerce center fined the blogger a record 1.34 billion yuan ($210 million) for tax evasion, which is the largest fine against celebrities.

36-year-old Huang Wei, known by her pseudonym Viya, is one of the most popular opinion leaders in the Chinese market with more than 110 million subscribers on social networks.

Viya is known for its ability to sell anything through live broadcasts. In 2020, she sold missile launch services for 40 million yuan.

According to media reports, in 2021 at the online shopping festival, known as Singles Day, she was able to sell goods totaling 8.5 billion yuan in one evening.

She avoided taxes of more than 700 million yuan in total from 2019 to 2020 with the help of many methods of tax evasion, including concealing fees, declaring personal wages as corporate income and the absence of reports on taxable income, according to a statement published on Monday December 20 by the Zhejiang Provincial Tax Service at the State Tax Administration.

According to the authorities, a total of 1.341 billion yuan in taxes, additional penalties and fines was imposed on Huang Wei.

The tax bureau also said Viya cooperated with the tax authority and would not face any criminal charges while it pays the fine. However, it is unclear how the fine will affect Viya's presence on the Internet in the future. Her accounts on Chinese resources have been unavailable since December 20.

Viya later posted an apology on the social network Weibo, similar to Twitter:

During the investigation, I realized that my actions really violated tax laws and rules, I am very repentant and apologize to the public, "she said. - I fully agree with the decision of the tax department to punish me in accordance with the law.

This episode signals that Beijing is turning its attention to the arena of online streaming, which flourished with little regulation. This high-profile case can scare merchants and brands who rely on the format to increase sales not only on Alibaba, but also on the platforms of a number of its competitors.^[1]

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