"Policy of innovation" or "means of tax avoidance"—Practice and enlightenment of the "Patent Box" Policy in the United Kingdom

XIAO Bing

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Science Research Management ›› 2021, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (1) : 113-123.

"Policy of innovation" or "means of tax avoidance"—Practice and enlightenment of the "Patent Box" Policy in the United Kingdom

Xiao Bing¹, He Limin^1,3, Xu Ke²

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Abstract

Tax preference is an important means and way to stimulate innovation, "patent box" is an important policy to promote enterprise innovation in EU. In practice, the policy has achieved good results in reducing the tax burden of enterprises and promoting the use of intellectual property rights. At the government level, the introduction of the "patent box" policy is mainly due to two reasons: first, the intellectual property rights represented by patents have become the main carrier for multinational companies to obtain profits, and their trading activities are extremely sensitive to tax rate issues; second, governments of various countries are in order to encourage the innovation and development of regional knowledge economy. The reason why the policy is called "patent box" is that taxpayers who enjoy the preferential policy need to tick a box in their tax returns. From the essence of this policy, the so-called "patent box" refers to a kind of preferential tax policy for the government to reduce and reduce the use fee, license fee, sales income of products or services and infringement compensation income in the process of specific types of intellectual property transactions. By the end of 2019, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and other EU member states have successively formulated "patent box" policies.
"Patent box" policy, as a preferential policy to promote enterprises to use intellectual property by reducing tax burden, is being accepted by more and more countries. It is becoming an important policy for all countries to attract enterprises′ intellectual property transactions, promote the localized implementation of scientific and technological achievements, and then enhance the regional innovation ability and level. Thanks to comprehensive and systematic statistical data and policy evaluation, the UK has become a typical sample to study the implementation effect of "patent box" policy in EU. The "patent box" policy, which is part of the UK government′s economic growth plan, started in 2013 and aims to provide additional incentives (in terms of tax) to encourage enterprises to invest in innovation. The specific policy objectives include: first, to apply for patents in the UK for intellectual property rights acquired in the UK, while ensuring that new and existing patents can be developed and commercialized in the UK; second, to produce and sell these innovative products and services from the UK. Third, encourage companies to create high-value jobs in the process of developing, manufacturing and utilizing these patents in the UK. The formulation and implementation of the "patent box" policy in the UK constitute two main clues for the development and evolution of the policy in the UK. In terms of policy-making, the formulation of the "patent box" policy in the UK has gone through four stages: policy research and planning, policy content design, draft opinion collection and bill promulgation and implementation. From 2013 to 2017, the average annual growth rate of the total tax reduction and exemption from the implementation of the policy is 44%, and the influence of the policy on enterprises is increasing year by year, which shows that more and more enterprises attach importance to and use the "patent box" policy to obtain tax relief.
There are some practical problems that preferential policies have been abused and become tax avoidance tools of enterprises. Therefore, how to balance the two has become an important factor affecting the evolution of the "patent box" policy. Accordingly, we can evaluate the "patent box" policy represented by the United Kingdom from two aspects: encouraging innovation and restricting tax avoidance. Theoretical and practical studies show that the implementation of the "patent box" policy can enhance the enthusiasm of enterprises to apply for patents. But at the same time, "patent box" has the policy effect of encouraging patent application, so the implementation of the policy will cause the decline of patent application examination level due to the increase of patent application. In recent years, in order to prevent companies from transferring their operating income offshore through intellectual property rights for the purpose of tax avoidance, the BEPS action plan actively promoted by OECD aims to limit the scope of application of the "patent box" policy, clarify the calculation method, and reduce the possibility of abuse by limiting the scope of application and refining the calculation method.
From the perspective of the policy system of improving scientific and technological innovation, China can learn from the "patent box" policy, which can be a beneficial supplement to the existing tax incentives, and help to establish a whole process tax preferential system from innovation and research to innovation achievements. Firstly, "patent box" is an important part of improving the tax preferential policy system of scientific and technological innovation, which is conducive to encouraging enterprise innovation; secondly, the "patent box" policy is similar to the existing "enterprise income tax policy of technology transfer income", and there are still some development obstacles in China. Therefore, China can promote the "patent box" policy from the following aspects: first, in terms of the application conditions of the preferential tax policy, appropriately relax the recognition standard of the income from technology transfer of resident enterprises, relax or cancel the time limit of "five years", and lower the threshold for market entities to enjoy the preferential tax policy; second, in the scope of application of the preferential tax policy, it is limited to "invention patent" and "utility model" should appropriately raise the technical threshold for enterprises to enjoy preferential policies, which reflects the requirements of improving patent quality in China at the present stage, and also conforms to the trend of international intellectual property tax preferential policies restricting intellectual property types; thirdly, it is suggested that small and medium-sized enterprises should be given targeted preferential measures in terms of the applicable objects of tax preferential policies Give.

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patent box / tax incentives / intellectual property / public finance and taxation policie

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Xiao Bing, He Limin, Xu Ke. "Policy of innovation" or "means of tax avoidance"—Practice and enlightenment of the "Patent Box" Policy in the United Kingdom[J]. Science Research Management. 2021, 42(1): 113-123

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