Hey man, I got receipts, you need receipts?
Posted by Aaron Lopin on Mon, Dec 17, 2007 @ 04:23 AM
In China, the black market for receipts is booming. Street corners will often see shady characters standing around offering black market receipts to passersby. Hey, you! You want receipts? 发票(Fa1) (Piao4)发票(Fa1)(Piao4)！发(Fa1), among other things, means 'to issue' and 票(Piao4) means 'ticket' or 'receipt.' One might wonder why one would need black market receipts. Well, a story should illustrate one possible use. My friend, let's call him ‘Aaron,' worked at a company that allowed employees to not pay taxes on the part of their salary used for housing, up to 5000 RMB. So he submitted a black market receipt for ‘housing' for 5000 and avoided paying 20% tax on those 5000, thus saving 1000. After paying 100 in service fee for the receipt, he was still able to save some 900 RMB. Of course this is only one example, and in China nowadays there are many ways to use 发票。When doing business, you can often get cheaper prices up to 20% from companies if you don't require them to issue you a 发票, since if they don't issue it then they will not have to pay taxes on the off-record transaction.