General Department of Taxation "urge" to recover debt

Procedures at the Tax Department of Ho Chi Minh City. Picture: Nguyen Hue.

60/63 localities increased tax debt

According to statistics of the General Department of Taxation, up to 30/4/2018, the total amount of tax debts of 63 provincial and city tax departments increased by 26.1% compared to December 31, 2017. The debt ratio on the total domestic revenue estimate is 8.4%, 3.4% higher than the target assigned by the Prime Minister in Resolution No. 01 / NQ-CP dated 1/1/2018.

According to statistics, the amount of tax debt increased to focus on the group of receivable debt (up to 90 days and over 90 days), up 42.7% compared with December 31, 2017, and focus on five taxes (corporate income tax increased by 99.1%, value added tax increased by 12.7%, special consumption tax increased by 9.9%, personal income tax increased by 42.8% and environmental protection tax increased by 126.6%).

Remarkably, there are 60/63 tax debt localities with increased tax debts compared to 31/12/2017, in which 26/60 localities have increased debts of over 100 billion, including: Lao Cai, Binh Duong, Thai Binh, Nghe An, Khanh Hoa, Quang Nam, Binh Thuan, Thai Nguyen, Vinh Phuc, Ba Ria - Vung Tau, Dak Lak, Long An, Ninh Bình, Thanh Hóa, Lai Châu, Ninh Thuận, Quảng Ninh, Đa Nang, Ha Nam, Binh Phuoc, Quang Binh, An Giang. There are only three out of 63 localities that have tax reliefs including Kon Tum, Bac Ninh and Hai Phong.

According to the General Department of Taxation, the collection of tax arrears in the first five months of 2018 only reached 35.7% of taxable receivables (up to 90 days and over 90 days) at the time of 31/12/2017, and lower than over the same period in 2017.

Representatives of the General Department of Taxation explained that the tax debts in the early months of 2018 increased due to objective reasons such as the amount of old debts in the many previous years are not recoverable; the amount for late payment increases by 0.03% per day, and there are the situations of enterprises meeting financial difficulties, shutting business down, leaving business addresses, dissolving, bankruptcy; and there are a proportion of taxpayers that aren’t aware of their compliance with tax laws.

In addition, according to the General Department of Taxation, there are other subjective reasons, such as some units do not pay attention to dire instructions, do not often monitor and urge the implementation of measures to promote debt recovery .

Reviewing and classifying tax arrears

Representative of the General Department of Taxation said that in order to ensure to collect immediately new arising tax arrears, reduce tax arrears and complete the target of tax debt recovery that the National Assembly and the Government assigned, the General Department of Taxation has issued the legal text to direct the local tax offices to intensify the urge and coercion of tax debt recovery.

According to The General Department of Taxation, before June 30, 2018, the leadership of the Taxation Department assigned the task of urging and applying tax debt coercive measures for the list of taxpayers that have the ability to pay, and new revenue arising in the first months of 2018 for the leaders and officials involved in the management of tax debts so they can immediately collect the new tax arrears and continue to collect the old debts to reduce outstanding tax arrears.

The Taxation Department must also carry out promptly tax debt enforcement measures for enterprises that are in tax debt-forcible remedies, or to be transferred to subsequent measures because they had been applied the coercive measures before, but not yet collected or not fully paid the tax debt, according to the list of enterprises assigned by the General Department of Taxation in early 2018.

The General Department of Taxation also assigned agencies to revise and re-examine all tax classification dossiers for cases classified into the tax debt difficult to collect, the handling debts and the pending debts to ensure the classification of tax debts in the centralized tax administration system (TMS) accurately and correctly in terms of the amount of tax debts, with complete records and documents.

In addition, the leaders of tax departments have directed the tax declaration and information units to review the data of tax declaration, vouchers, tax receipts of taxpayers for detecting incorrectly submitted data of incorrect budget figures and incorrect tax identification number, so as to adjust and promptly handle cases of wrong debts, virtual debts ...

Particularly, the tax departments must adjust and handle the situation of outstanding debts pending settlement at the time of 30/4/2018 in their locality, and to be completed before July 31. There is not to be the debt condition of waiting for adjustment and processing to last a year, or debts for many years but not adjusted.