The e-commerce live streaming room is brightly lit, with flash sales taking place one after another on the screen; In the platform backend, the investment budget figures are constantly rolling. In recent years, traffic has become a battleground for merchants in China's e-commerce landscape. However, when the campaign of "making more people see me" becomes a routine operation, how to define its relationship with traditional commercial advertising has become a question for many people. In July of this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued enforcement guidelines on the application of the Advertising Law, focusing on the core issue of "what is commercial advertising" and clarifying the boundaries between commercial advertising and other commercial propaganda under the continuous evolution of new technologies and models. This new regulation pushes traffic into the 'bright audit room'. From now on, every penny invested in traffic is no longer just a "cost" on the company's books, but should return to the core of advertising and business promotion expenses and be included in the regulatory perspective. Who is the first to be tested in the early stages of policy implementation? According to a survey conducted by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporters, there has long been a vague area around e-commerce "investment fees": some platforms issue invoices for technical service fees and information service fees, but their actual functions combine multiple attributes such as advertising display, algorithm distribution, and sales commissions. In this regard, Liu Peng, the author of "Computational Advertising" and a visiting professor at the School of Advertising and Branding at Communication University of China, stated that when these complex functions are uniformly packaged into technical service fee invoices, tax qualitative analysis naturally falls into a dilemma. So how are the new regulations being enforced? Has the tax treatment of e-commerce marketing costs been significantly changed? Professor Zhang Xin, Vice Dean of the School of Law at the University of International Business and Economics, said that in short, the investment flow expenses will be deducted from the original full cost to the advertising fee limit. Once the limit is exceeded, the excess will be directly included in the taxable profit of the current year. Reporters interviewed multiple companies and found that the three types of entities have the most concentrated pressure. One is the new consumer brand that relied on high-intensity streaming to rapidly expand in the live broadcast room. Multiple beauty companies have calculated that if they continue to follow the original buying volume rhythm, the proportion of investment flow to revenue will soon exceed 30%, and they will face significant adjustment pressure under the new regulations. The second is small and medium-sized clothing merchants with low unit prices and limited profit margins. Their current business situation is already tight, and once they strictly follow the new regulations, their ability to bear the financial burden will be put to the test. Thirdly, for some enterprises that handle investment expenditures under the name of "technical service fees" for a long time, once the relevant expenses are clearly classified as advertising expenses, their financial accounting methods and compliance strategies need to be adjusted synchronously. The policy is telling the market that the extensive model of burning money to grab quantity has come to an end. ”Professor Zhang Xin said that the new regulations have actually created a watershed for different types of enterprises. Enterprises that rely on product strength, supply chain, and refined operations to win will actually run more steadily in the new environment. Many small and medium-sized businesses have expressed concerns about the new regulations, saying, "Our annual investment cost of several million yuan, we didn't really care about what fees it was before." A clothing category seller admitted that their biggest concern now is whether they will be traced back in the past few years. Experts suggest that in the early stages of policy implementation, on the one hand, guidance should be provided by industry and scale to help small and medium-sized enterprises understand how to calculate their accounts; On the other hand, more inclusive transitional arrangements can also be explored. In the short term, it is a pain, but in the medium to long term, it is a true promotion of business ability, "said Zhang Xin. How do platforms and algorithms handle the transition from impulse to accounting? Faced with the reshaping of rules, the platform's response is also noteworthy. The reporter's research found that some top platforms have recently quietly adjusted the presentation of advertising products and the design of backend tools. Advertising products are shifting from 'helping customers get more traffic' to 'directly helping customers calculate more clearly'. ”The reporter found that the investment cost analysis tool launched on a certain platform is attempting to break down the originally vague investment cost into multiple modules such as creative production, algorithm matching, and advertising space bidding, allowing enterprises to classify and estimate more clearly. This kind of dismantling not only helps enterprises classify and record according to the requirements of the Advertising Law, but more importantly, provides clear inspection basis for the tax department. The future trend is to embed the 'compliance verification' function in algorithm systems. ”Liu Peng believes that AI compliant parallel computing will gradually become a standard feature for advertising platforms, from real-time interception of sensitive words in advertising laws to automatic prompting of possible tax attributes based on advertising purposes. The transformation of platform roles is not only reflected in the iteration of technological tools, but also reflects the redefinition of the responsibility boundaries of digital economy infrastructure providers. Submitting tax related information in accordance with regulations and cooperating with regulatory authorities to conduct data verification have become important links for the platform to fulfill its social responsibility. The governance logic of the digital economy and the new rules for the future are not issued in isolation: on the one hand, it is the law enforcement guidelines that include investment fees into the category of advertising fees, and on the other hand, it is the institutional arrangements that require Internet platforms to submit tax related information according to regulations. These collectively point to the long-term and refined governance of the platform economy. This is more like an adjustment to the 'growth mode' of the digital economy. ”Zhang Xin believes that the platform economy has played a huge role in driving employment and expanding domestic demand in the past, but the extensive traffic competition has also brought problems such as inflated advertising, inflated costs, and unfair competition. By adjusting rules, companies can be pulled out of 'traffic anxiety' and return to their products, services, and brands themselves, "she said. Zhang Xin believes that on the one hand, enterprises need to complete the transformation from "pursuing dividends" to "strong capabilities" in terms of mentality. On the other hand, it is necessary to establish a refined decision-making system with data feedback as the core: no longer only focusing on the total amount of commodity transactions and short-term conversions, but also measuring more indicators such as repurchase rate, user retention, and customer acquisition cost recovery cycle. From a regulatory perspective, finding a balance between risk prevention and encouraging innovation is also a challenge in current institutional design. Several interviewed experts believe that the institutional adjustment around investment flow fees is only a fulcrum in the digital economy governance system. To truly form a healthy ecosystem, it is necessary to coordinate financial and tax regulations with market supervision, data governance, anti-monopoly and other tools. (New Society)