Customs of HCM City: Increased revenue by nearly 220 billion VND from anti-revenue loss solutions

	Director of HCM City Customs speaks about two big drug cases
	HCM City Customs organises dialogue with processing enterprises
	HCM City export goods still increase during pandemic

Officers of Tan Son Nhat Airport Customs Sub-Department guide procedures for enterprises. Photo: T.H

Against loss of revenue from specific goods

According to the Customs Department of HCM City, from the beginning of the year until now, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the volume of import and export goods through border gates of HCM City has been impacted, affecting the State budget revenues of the unit. With measures to prevent loss of budget revenues deployed synchronously, Customs Department of HCM City has increased revenue for the State budget by nearly 220 billion VND through measures, such as: price consultation, post-customs clearance inspection, setting up price of non-commercial goods.

Notably, the tax increase from internal budget revenue is implemented effectively bysub-departments at the border with many specific commodity groups. Typically, at the Customs Branch at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, from the beginning of 2020 up to now, due to the impact of thepandemic, theimmigration flights decreased sharply, causing the amount of imported and exported goods to decrease significantly. However, the unit proactively took measures to prevent revenue loss from specific imported goods, resulting in increasing revenue of nearly 8 billion dong. For example, a batch of imported moon cakes, procedure team of import goods of sub-department have consulted, increasing budget revenue by nearly 60 million dong in tax. Specifically, according to the owner's declaration, the price of a box of 48moon cakes costed US$50.Through price consultation, the sub-department declared price, increased to more thanUS$94 per barrel. Imported salmon products were also adjusted for tax calculation prices, increasing the budget revenue in excess of 235 million dong.

Goods imported under the non-commercial form are mainly new and first imported, so to build a reasonable price, apply tax calculation to the State budget, Customs officers must study and learn toget information from many sources. With this approach, many non-commercial consignments have been adjusted by Customs officers to increase taxes by tens of millions of dong, even with a tax increase of hundreds of millions dong. There were identical items with the same owner, imported within a short period of time, but each time it is imported, the owner declared a different price. For example, the gate valve consignment, which was imported for the first time in the last month of June, declared aprice of US$2,000, but in September, the owner declared the price only US$200 (down 10 times). Customs officers struggled, building prices up to US$2,000. For non-commercial goods, from the beginning of the year until now, the Customs Sub-Department of Tan Son Nhat International Airport has built prices, boostingState budget revenue by nearly 3.5 billion dong in tax.

At the seaport border gate, the border gate Customs unit has consulted and increased budget revenue quite a lot. Among the 12 sub-department that increased the State budget revenue, the Saigon Port Region 1 Customs Sub-Department increased revenue by more than150 billion VND. As for price consultation, this sub-department increased revenue by nearly 145 billion dong. The items subject to a tax increase after the price consultation focused on imported cars, fibres andchildren's toys. From now to the end of the year, in addition to key products, the Customs Sub-Department of the Saigon Port Region 1 will focus on checking the prices ofanti-dumping tax, safeguard tax on steel, sanitary equipment, motorcycles andbicycles.

Efforts to increase budget revenue

Amid the complex pandemic, the Customs Department of HCM City has focused on performing the topics of post-customs clearance inspection that were assigned, solving information collection on the customs database, minimizing inspection at business headquarters. For HS codes, in case the amount of arrears or the number of declarations that need to be checked is small, the Customs Department of HCM City does not set up an inspection team, asking the Customs Sub-Department to directly review and press tax regulation and collect arrears according to regulations.

According to theCustoms Department ofHCM City Customs Department, the budget revenue of the unit as of September 16was 70,246 billion VND, reaching 61% of the ordinance estimate and 58.1% of the target, down 15.2% compared to the same period of 2019. The Customs ofHCM City forecasts that the group of import goods with high taxes (subject to special consumption tax, anti-dumping tax, and safeguard tax) will not increase compared to the first months of 2020. Thus, the ability to complete the target of 115,000 billion VND this year is a big challenge for the Customs Department ofHCM City.

The Customs Department of HCM City continues to direct the sub-department to focus on prevention of budget revenue loss and notifythe Customs Sub-Department and the Post-Customs Clearance Inspection Sub-Department on direct shipping conditions, tax lines not eligible for special incentives specified in tariff schedules (including shipments with C/O but still not entitled to special preferential tax rates), on the validity of documents issued by the manufacturer (self-certification of origin). Along with that, building detailed and specific plans to inspect, detect and handle violations of customs laws.

Post-control work will focus on collecting, reviewing and analyzing data on key and outstanding products with value, origin, and codes. In particular, focusing on enterprises with high risks, complicated import-export activities, production and imports in many different areas.