Since 25 March 2010, the Beijing Aizhixing Institute for Health Education ('Aizhixing') has been under investigation by the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau in relation to, inter alia, alleged non-payment of business taxes. Aizhixing is a prominent AIDS advocacy NGO which aims at increasing awareness about HIV/AIDS and advocates on the rights and interests Since 25 March 2010, the Beijing Aizhixing Institute for Health Education ('Aizhixing') has been under investigation by the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau in relation to, inter alia, alleged non-payment of business taxes. Aizhixing is a prominent AIDS advocacy NGO which aims at increasing awareness about HIV/AIDS and advocates on the rights and interests of those infected with HIV/AIDS in China. On 19 May 2010, the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau expanded its investigation of Aizhixing to incorporate the years 2002-2010. Two agents of the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau entered the offices of Aizhixing, questioned staff in relation to alleged unpaid business taxes since 2002, and ordered that all documents related to the organisation's overseas funding in the past seven years, including details of its financial accounts for this year and those between 2002 and 2007 along with its financial and audit reports in the same period, be made available to them by 21 May 2010. At that time, Aizhixing's legal adviser, Li Xiongbing, was under house arrest, reportedly due to the US-China Dialogues being held in Beijing, and thus unable to advise on the legality of the demands. Details of Aizhixing's financial accounts for the period 2008-2010 had already been provided to the Beijing Local Taxation Bureau. Independent NGOs in China are not allowed to register as non-profit organisations without a governmental-backed agency as their caretaker; consequently many NGOs must register as businesses and, as such, are forced to pay taxes. However, even registered as a business, according to Chinese law, enterprises may receive donations on which they must only pay institutional income tax, rather than business tax. According to sources at Aizhixing, the district tax and audit authorities had long acknowledged the group's non-profit status and had never before required it to treat grants as commercial income and therefore pay business taxes; furthermore, in 2008 the group's accounts were checked for the previous two years by the district tax department and no breaches were found, indicating that grants were recognised as such, rather than commercial income. According to Aizhixing's legal adviser, there are doubts as to the legality of the tax authorities' actions as the law forbids repeated tax investigations and, according to Article 86 of the Law on the Management of Tax Collection, breaches which took place more than five years previous to their discovery are not punishable. However, should the authorities decide to charge business tax retroactively combined with a maximum fine, as has been the case in the past, Aizhixing could face a fine of up to 8 million yuan (just under __�1 million). According to Wan Yanhai, the founder of Aizhixing since 25 March 2010, the organisation has been subject to harassment by ten government agencies, including investigations of possible breaches by the tax, commerce and industry bureaus, and fire department. On 24 May 2010, the office was visited by staff from the office of their landlord, who claimed to be there to ensure that Aizhixing was complying with all the necessary fire safety regulations. They also informed staff that they would be visiting once a week from then on. Previous to this, such inspections had been undertaken less than once a year. of those infected with HIV/AIDS in China.