Answering over 30 questions on Tax - Customs policies for Southern enterprises

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Deputy Minister of Finance Vu Thi Mai delivered a speech at the Conference

According to statistics of the organization board, 30 questions of over 20 enterprises were answered by leaders of the Department of Tax Policy under the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Taxation and General Department of Customs.

Remarkably, many enterprises highly appreciated the reform of administrative procedures to support the enterprises of the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Taxation and General Department of Customs, however there were many problems mentioned at the Conference.

Specifically, according to the Soc Trang Business Association, the current assigned tax policies are not really fair; many units have large revenue but their assigned payable taxes are low which makes them not want to register their business as a company. Selling products without invoices is still common, not only individual business but also small size and medium size enterprises which collect hundreds of millions per day without invoices and though consumers have to pay for tax, they are also not familiar with getting purchasing invoices. This causes not only loss to the State budget revenue but also inequality in production and business

Also according to representatives of the Soc Trang Business Association, the implementation of tax refund still has many shortcomings, for example: a company in Soc Trang province was eligible for tax refund prior inspection but the company was transferred to inspection prior tax refund and finally the company did not receive the tax refund, which led to loss of more than 40 billion vnd for the company from non- tax refund. Currently there have been provisions to penalize enterprises that pay tax late but there have not been provisions to penalize tax agencies which delay the implementation of tax refund for enterprises.

In addition, the representatives of Soc Trang Business Association also said that Taxation should improve the efficiency of propaganda and guidelines on tax policies for enterprises to avoid that enterprises does not fully understand the policies on tax declarations and tax reports, when being inspected, enterprises need to pay large tax arrears leading to bankruptcy.

Regarding the policies, a representative of Kim Xuan Company in Can Tho said: that the company is free from import duty for raw materials for production of exporting goods having to pay anti-dumping duty is unreasonable, makes difficulties for company in production and business.

Also concerning the problems on tax procedures, a company’s representative acknowledged that during investigating the performance of tax procedures of the company from 2010 to 2013, the Ho Chi Minh Department of Taxation implemented the collection of tax arrears and fines for late payment and administrative violations for the company due to the company not being eligible for tax incentives in expanded investments. However, after that the Taxation department re-determined the company’s investment activity which was a regular investment, the company was entitled to tax incentives and received back the paid tax arrears. But the fines for late payment and administrative violations were not paid back to the company.

Besides the specific problems mentioned above, many enterprises also complained about the disunion in instructions and performances of tax procedures between the General Department of Taxation and local tax agencies as well as between local tax agencies that caused difficulties for the enterprises.

About Customs, many enterprises also proposed to shorten the time in specialized inspection and reasonably handled violations of enterprises due to differences in results of analysis and HS code application and stated suggestions relating to C/O for imported goods. Speaking at the conference, Deputy Minister of Finance Vu Thi Mai highly appreciated the questions and comments and the successes of the production and business of the enterprises during the past time and wished the business community to continue to invest and promote the production and business activities to contribute to economic development.

Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai asked enterprises to work with Tax and Customs agencies, and strictly abide by laws on Tax and Customs. The Ministry of Finance directed the General Department of Taxation and the General Department of Customs together with functional agencies of the Ministry of Finance to review and post unanswered questions in the conference on the websites of the General Department of Taxation and the General Department of Customs. For written questions, the General Department of Taxation and General Department of Customs will answer in documents.

Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai requested enterprises to continue to reflect and suggest to the General Department of Taxation, the General Department of Customs and the Ministry of Finance about the arising problems on procedures and policies on Tax and Customs besides problems mentioned in the conference for the General Department of Taxation, the General Department of Customs and the Ministry of Finance to direct their functional units to answer and solve the problems for enterprises in a timely fashion.

Continuously upgrading the application supporting online tax declarations VCN- In recent times, the General Department of Taxation has continuously upgraded and updated the application supporting ...

According to Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai, on the basis of contributions from the enterprises and VCCI on recommendations today as well as problems arising in production and business, the Ministry of Finance acknowledged and directed the units to study the managing polices and perfect the tax policies in equity, transparency and simplicity, and continue to reform the administrative procedures and modernize Taxation, Customs, and train officials and carry out the movements and rotations for the officials during performance of public duties to better serve enterprises.