Customs drastically performs revenue collection

	Exempting using agricultural land tax does not affect revenue collection
	Domestic revenue collection starts to decline
	Revenue collection of tax sector steps into hard times

Customs operation at Vung Ang Customs. Photo: P.T

According to the GDVC, as of May 10, State revenue from import-export activities was VND 108,311 billion, 32% of the estimate and 30.5% of the desired target, downby 14.6% of 2019. In the first month of 2020, the impacts of the complicated Covid-19 pandemic in largecountries such as China, the US, European countries, South Korea and Japanaffected the global and the Vietnamese economy, causing disruptions in production, business, trade and imports and exports due to the closure of many border gates and air routes to prevent the spread of pandemic that affects State budget revenue. Therefore, it is difficult to fulfill the State revenue estimate for 2020.

However, following the Prime Minister's directive on urgent tasks and solutions to remove difficulties for production and business as well asensure social security in response to Covid-19; implementing solutions to facilitate trade and improve effectiveness and efficiency of the State management and anti-revenue losses in performing revenue collection 2020, the GDVC requested municipal and provincial customs departments to effectively implement Resolution No.01/NQ-CP dated January 1, 2020 on main tasks and solutions for the implementation of the Socio-economic Development Plan and State Budget estimates in 2020; Resolution No.02/NQ-CP dated January 1, 2020 on building and implementing drastically and synchronously action plans for administrative procedure reform, customs modernisation and environmental business improvement and enhancing national competitiveness in 2020; Resolution 01-NQ/BCSD dated January 1, 2020 of Party Committee of Ministry of Finance; Directive 11/ CT-TTg of the Prime Minister on urgent tasks and solutions to remove difficulties for production and business andensure social security in response to Covid-19.

Continue to carry out the tasks assigned in Directive 1040/CT-TCHQ of the Director General of Vietnam Customs to strive to fulfill the State revenue target 2020,continue to reform and simplify customs procedures, accelerate customs modernisationand IT application in areas of management andsupervision for import-export goods, as well as collection of import-export taxes, administrative procedure reform, creating favourable conditions for businesses.

The GDVC also requested municipal and provincial customs departments intensify the review and monitoring of revenue sources, especially the import-export situation with countries that have affected by Covid-19 pandemic such as the US, China, Japan and European countries, andclosely monitor the import and export of agricultural and forestry products, the import of raw materials, supplies, machinery and equipment to promptly report and reflect to serve the state budget management. Prioritisingcustoms procedures for fresh fruit products especially in harvest season when the volume of goods increases; assign specialised officials to process procedures for export agricultural products and fresh fruits for export enterprises; receive enterprises’ feedbacks and carry out procedures quickly to cuttime and costs for enterprises.

In addition, the GDVC tolddepartments to focus on reviewing and monitoring tax debts in their customs branches; to classify groups of recoverable tax debt, debts waiting for exemption, reduction and elimination; assessing in details each debt under each declaration and each debtor. It also requested directors of departments tell their departments to deploy solutions to recover and handle debts instructed by the GDVC. For conditional tax exemptions and reductions such as processed goods, goods imported for manufacturing possessing goods, goods imported for manufacturing export goods, it is necessary to have strict control measures to prevent tax debts incurring that owners of businesses vacated from business addresses or returned to their countries and tax cannot be collected.

It asked municipal and provincial customs departments not to conduct periodic inspections in 2020 for businesses without signsof violations. At the same time, prevent businesses from taking advantage of this policy to breakthe law. On the other hand, strengthen post-clearance audit, specialisedinspection, which focuses on items with great value, high tax rates, goods imported by businesses from markets with suspicious signs; goods declared with a lower price level than databases, goods declared with special preferential tax rates, and goods declared as goods subject to tax exemption and refund; goods declared in incorrect regime for tax refund.