In China, there is always a special group of people hanging around the streets and whispering to passers-by “want invoices?”
The invoices they are selling are mostly real invoices from restaurants or hotels since many guests don’t take invoices after they pay the bill. The price of the invoices is usually 10% of the real number printed in the invoices. It is of course illegal, and the government has tried to kill this phenomenon for a long time, but the invoice sellers are becoming more instead of less.
At first, I thought only those government officials need to buy these invoices in order to cheat the government for more money, while after my four-month-stay in CCTV (China Central Television, the biggest and most powerful media in China) for internship, I came to realize that why the invoice sellers can survive.
I worked in the international news editing group which has more than ten people, and each one earns around 6,000 yuan (about 900 dollars) per month. But before they get the salary, they have to hand in dozens of invoices with the number printed on them amounts the total number of 6,000, and all the invoices should be from restaurants under the name of treating interviewees for lunch or dinner. They even made up the names of the interviewees. It is really an event to see them pasting all the invoices in one piece of paper at the end of every month.
But the problem is that no one can get all the invoices in the normal way, so they can only buy them from the invoice sellers. Let’s say they can get 2,000 yuan (which is still a big number and few people can make it)of invoices in the normal way every month, they still need to buy 4,000 yuan of them, which means they have to pay 400 yuan for the invoices.
The thing is that the working staff in the group never pays taxes for the salary, (according to the law, people of monthly earnings above 1,800 yuan should pay taxes), but they pay 400 yuan for the invoices, so they don’t get benefit from escaping the taxes. So who gets it then? Of course CCTV! The salaries are all from the profits of the television station, if they switch them to the dinner expenses with the invoices, they can successfully escape the taxes.
It is so ridiculous that the main propaganda media, which urges people to fight against the invoice sellers, forces its employees to go to buy the invoices as well.
Normally, CCTV doesn’t pay the internees, but I got a bonus finally since I ended my internship there in December, the month for people to get annual bonus, and the group leader was nice to put my name on the bonus list. In order to get the money, I have to have enough invoices, so I checked out a number of an invoice seller through internet and made a call.
“Do you have invoices from restaurants?”
“Sure, we have invoices of many restaurants, which one do you want?”
“Eh,,,” as a green hand, I don’t know what to choose, “which restaurant’s invoices are most popular here? I need some to get my bonus from the company.”
“ha-ha, where are you from? CCTV?”
“Why?”
“It is the bonus time for employees in CCTV, and we got many calls from them today.”
So you see, absolutely no problem for the invoice sellers to survive, since CCTV is such a huge body, and even so, CCTV is just one of tens of thousands companies that pay salary in this way.
