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A consultation session of enterprises about the draft Circular amending Circular 38/2015 / TT-BTC (April 2017). Photo: Ngoc Linh.

Needs stability in policy

Reports on the results of monitoring the implementation of major tasks and solutions for improving the business environment and raising the national competitiveness in the taxation and Customs of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front showed that in reality, the legal system in the taxation and customs was not synchronous and overlapping, leading to difficulties in implementation and coordination among functional agencies. There is no binding mechanism in the prevention of loss and inter-sectoral inspections.

Besides, the specialized inspections have many shortcomings, especially from the ministries and sectors. Accordingly, ministries are slow to amend and supplement legal documents on management, specialized inspections, which affects the time of Customs clearance of imported and exported goods.

Mr. Tran Thanh Man, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, quoted the assessment of the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the 2017 Review Conference of the Taxation: "Tax policy development has not caught up with the development of socio-economic life. The lack of assessment of the impact, the insufficient reality, lack of response, the vulnerability of the policy led to the unfair and unhealthy business environment, loss of State budget and loss of competent staff".

Many representatives of enterprises said that the information connection was still poor. The incomplete data warehouses from banks, tax and Customs made it difficult for businesses. The issue of adjusted, supplemented and replaced documents in a quick way caused many businesses not to update information effectively. Therefore, the tax and Customs policies need to be stable in the long run to create conditions for businesses.

The importance is institutional reform

Regarding the efforts of the Ministry of Finance as well as the taxation and Customs sector in implementing Resolution 19 on improving the business environment and enhancing competitiveness, in particular, the shift from tax payment and declaration to pay electronic tax is a great revolution. However, Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh, Chairman of the Vietnam Automobile Transportation Association said that there were many problems that need to be improved to facilitate businesses and people. It is possible to minimize more business conditions and administrative procedures.

"Recently, the Prime Minister has chaired a series of national conferences on logistic costs, export and construction investment, which shows that the cost of logistics is too high, still up to 30-35%. Customs procedures also cause high logistical costs. Therefore, these costs should be reduced to 20%, otherwise the domestic companies will lose", Mr. Thanh stressed.

Many enterprises also said that it was necessary to have solutions to support legitimate enterprises with tax risks. Continue to reduce business tax and customs procedures to facilitate business. At the same time, the electronic invoicing project was put into operation in order to better manage and prevent tax losses as well as minimize taxpayers' procedures. Build a contingent of tax officers with integrity and innovation through ensuring the supervision and control mechanism in tax administration to serve the people and enterprises.

Mr. Vu Tien Loc, President of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) suggested that in the coming time, one of the important solutions is to focus on institutional reform on the taxation and Customs in order to avoid overlapping and unreasonable conditions. The Government's objective is to reduce at least 50% of business conditions and specialized inspections.

Taxation and Customs are two important areas that have great impact on the development of the business community in Vietnam. The Minister of Finance, Dinh Tien Dung, said that in addition to continuing institutional reform, the reform of administrative procedures in the field of taxation and Customs should focus on solutions such as raising the responsibility of heads of agencies and raising awareness of responsibilities of civil servants and staff on administrative reform.

Continue promoting the application of information technology to modernize the tax and Customs management, ensuring the declaration and payment of taxes, electronic tax and e-customs. Particularly, it is necessary to continue studying and simplifying administrative procedures, cutting down business conditions in a simple way, minimizing the contact between civil servants and enterprises.

Mr. Tran Thanh Man also suggested that the Ministry of Finance should recommend to the National Assembly to develop the Law to amend some laws related to specialized inspections in order to promote the implementation of the principle of risk management, food safety, quality control for exported and imported goods.

For food safety inspections, only indicators related to food safety will be tested. Exemption from inspection of imported goods is not applied for commercial purpose because it is not feasible and ineffective.

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Some representatives suggest that the Ministry of Finance and relevant ministries should consider and reduce the list of goods subject to specialized inspections, detail names of goods, standards and specific standards for inspection, avoid the overlap among the ministries, avoid a product subject to the management of many ministries that cause loss of time and expensive costs for businesses.