Encourage taxpayers to actively use the electronic public services

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The Taxation is proactively researching, testing and deploying various types of new electronic tax services. Photo: T.H

According to the latest report of the General Department of Taxation, on 30 November, 2016, the online tax declaration system was deployed in 63 tax departments and 100% of tax agencies under charge. At present, the country has more than 567,784 enterprises declaring taxes through the internet, accounting for 99.7% of the total acting enterprises.

Additionally, for the deployment of e-tax payment service, now there have been 96.7% of enterprises registering to use the service with Tax authorities and more than 93.7% of enterprises registering to use the service with banks with the e-tax payment amount of more than 404.6 billion vnd in 2016.

Currently, Taxation is proactively researching, testing and deploying various types of new electronic tax services such as: e-tax refunds; e-tax declarations and payments for house lease, e-tax payments for house and land transfer and e-tax payments for registration fees of automobiles and motorcycles; and building an e-receipt system with verification code.

To achieve these impressive numbers, Taxation had to undergo many difficulties and challenges. According to Mrs. Nguyen Thu Tra, Deputy Director of Information and Technology Department under the General Department of Taxation, the first difficulty of Taxation was the problems on the network and technical infrastructure and network overload with the large number of enterprises joining in the e-tax declarations and payments.

Moreover, other difficulties from enterprises were the low skills on information technology in some enterprises, leading to confusion in the implementation of e-tax declarations. Conditions of information technology application (computer, transmission lines) also affected the quality of electronic tax services.

Actually, enterprises would prefer to declare tax on paper and directly pay tax at Tax authorities, bank and State Treasuries to get information on tax policies. Furthermore, some enterprises did not want to change the declaration method from manual to electronic method due to the cost for purchasing a digital certificate and security services.

Mrs. Nguyen Thu Tra added: "Facing the difficulties and challenges mentioned above, leaders as well as officials of Taxation always try to convince enterprises to use the services; and seek technical solutions to improve the quality of the service system. The working guideline of the officials have also changed and they are ready to serve and support tax payers 24/7 in peak times”

Electronic payment for registration fees of automobiles and motorcycles implemented from the first quarter of 2017 VCN - After a period of preparing databases and equipment, and working with the relevant authorities, the ...

However, to provide electronic public services for taxpayers more effectively and conveniently, the representatives of the Tax authorities proposed the Government to direct ministries and departments to provide unified electronic services for the people to implement electronic public services in all steps. In addition, there should be common rules on the legality and validity of electronic documents to avoid cases where taxpayers using electronic records and documents adopted at the Tax authorities must submit and explain the paper records to other units and ministries and departments, which leads to difficulties and increases of procedures, time and cost for taxpayers and the society. Besides, the Government should have incentive mechanisms or specific incentives for people in general and for taxpayers in particular who actively use electronic public services to promote the domestic business environment more deeply and practically.