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The State Taxation Administration said on its
website that livestreamers and platforms should compete fairly
and fulfil their legal obligations to pay taxes.
"Livestreaming has played an important role in recent years in
promoting flexible employment," it said.
"At the same time, there are problems such as poor management by
livestreaming platforms, irregular commercial marketing
behaviour, tax evasion, which impede the industry's healthy
development and damage social fairness and justice."
Livestreaming has surged in popularity in China, with millions
of influencers running channels such as of Douyin, the Chinese
equivalent of TikTok, Kuaishou and other short video platforms,
where they talk about topics including lifestyle, food, games
and travel.
Chinese regulators have already targeted some of these
personalities for tax evasion, in particular a few who sell
products via livestream.
Internet celebrity Viya, whose real name is Huang Wei and was
known China for her sales prowess, was fined 1.34 billion yuan
($211.1 million) last December for hiding personal income and
other offences in 2019 and 2020.
China's cyberspace watchdog also warned earlier this month that
it will target companies that manage social media influencers
for rectifications this year.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Chinese
authorities are working on regulations to cap internet users'
daily monetary spending on digital tipping.
(Reporting by Sophie Yu, Brenda Goh; editing by Jason Neely and
Barbara Lewis)
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