Expanding the list of severe diseases exempted from the Personal Income Tax: Still waiting for the Ministry of Health

The list of severe disease exempted from the Personal income tax now has 42 categories Illustrated: Internet

Talking with Customs news, Ms. Ta Thi Phuong Lan, the Deputy Director of the Personal Income Tax Department at the General Department of Taxation said, this feedback usually focusses on the group of people with high income and high Personal income tax.

The PIT reduction and exemption of these types of patients are deducted within a year as stipulated by the Law on Personal Income Tax. The cost for medical treatment in 2016 can only be deducted from the amount of paid tax in 2016 when the patient wants to deduct that amount for the following years until the treatment fees run out. The regulations do not allow such deduction to be performed.

For those who do not know about the policy and do not received tax exemptions and tax deductions are still be able to accomplish the final settlement for PIT to be completed according to the regulations. Within 10 years, the Tax authority is still allowed to collect and refund the tax. If the patient suffers from severe disease and has received treatment over the time, but did not know about the entitlement, they can still claim for exemption or reduction.

"In view of common morality, I agree with the non-tax collection for patients with serious diseases. In one way it supports patients and their families in the difficult period. In the other way, the Personal income tax collection in Vietnam is mostly applied for foreigners. Vietnamese mostly live depending on the salary, so the payable Personal income tax amounts are not significant. Even when we remove people with serious diseases from paying tax, it not affect the State Budget” Ms. Phuong Lan shared.

However, according to Ms.Phuong Lan, although we want to remove people with serious diseases from paying tax, the current law regulates this so we have not yet removed it and if we want to change it, we have to amend the law, which takes a lot of time.

Notably, Ms.Ta Thi Phuong Lan said, there are only 42 diseases listed in the categories for tax exemptions or tax reduction, the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Taxation has repeatedly written to the Ministry of Health requesting to issue a separate list of serious diseases because only the specialized ministry knows about those diseases. Despite that, no feedback has been received from the Ministry of Health. Therefore, temporarily the General Department of Taxation is still using the list of serious diseases from insurance companies. However, it was the view of insurance that currently the General Department of Taxation still has not received the official opinions of the Ministry of Health.

The representatives of the General Department of Taxation shared, behind the lack of acknowledgment of patients on the policy there are many reasons. Essentially, the Law on Personal income tax was applied from 2009, in which it stipulated tax exemption or reduction for people with serious diseases in many years without any changes. Although the tax authority continually conducted annual dissemination but also it cannot disseminate all the provisions of the Law, but focuses primarily on the problems that change during the year. However, in terms of counseling and supporting taxpayers, tax authorities of all levels are always ready to assist when requested for counseling.

Exemption from personal income tax for experts of the United Nations and foreign NGOs. VCN - The Ministry of Finance has issued Circular No. 96/2016 / TT-BTC and Circular No. 97/2016 ...

In the coming year we will propose to the General Department of Taxation to direct all Departments of Taxation, and Tax Branches for the propagation of this policy to hospitals in localities, focus on the major hospitals, and hospitals with more patients with serious illnesses. Also the dissemination will not only be implemented at the hospitals but also will be performed on the mass media ", Ms.Ta Thi Phuong Lan confirmed.