Ho Chi Minh City drastically reforms tax administrative procedures

	Ho Chi Minh City supports taxpayers to finalize PIT in 2016
	Review and reduce unnecessary administrative procedures
	Continue to prioritize tax administrative procedures reform

Enterprises carrying out procedures at the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department. Photo: Nguyen Hue

Realizing the situation of administrative procedure reform on tax in the city, the Chairman of the People’s Council of Ho Chi Minh city, Nguyen Thi Quyet Tam said that the administrative reform on tax drastically implemented and gained good effects and reactions and high appreciation from many taxpayers and businesses. However, in fact that there are still many problems and obstacles that enterprises and taxpayers are facing.

Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association, Chu Tien Dung also stated that in recent times, the style of service and attitudes of cadres and civil servants for enterprises have been improved, Taxation has invested in Information technology infrastructure for enterprises to declare and pay tax conveniently.

However, many enterprises want the Tax agencies to continue to improve such as strengthening and popularizing tax policies and procedures because they are regularly changed, thereby enterprises cannot approach in time, and reducing tax declaration procedures for micro-enterprises.

For mistakes discovered by the Tax agencies in the process of tax finalization, but not from intention of enterprises, the Tax agencies should consider to collect additional tax rather than penalties to keep the reputation for enterprises and reduce losses for enterprises; and accelerate time and treat enterprises fairly. The fair treatment must be implemented in the tax refund, because when an enterprise pays tax late, it will be fined; when a tax agency delays the tax refund, it also must compensate for the enterprise .

Recognizing the efforts of the Tax Department and sub-departments in the administrative procedure reform on tax the Head of Legal Board of the Ho Chi Minh City, Truong Lam Danh said that through the supervision of the Legal Department over the past time, there were still some problems causing difficulties for businesses on the tax procedures such as tax refund time was slower than as regulated, especially for exporting businesses via road. Many businesses were unjustly collected for some invoices that were considered to be evaded by enterprises, and late sending of notifications on land rental fee made enterprises passive in business and tax accounting. In addition, Mr. Danh also stated that the Tax agencies and the Customs agencies should have links on procedure to notify that enterprises do not owe the import-export duties for enterprises to be deleted tax codes in accordance with the time as prescribed.

According to the representative of the Business Association of District 1, the tax authorities have not inspected tax finalization for many years, causing difficulties for enterprises. Specifically, some enterprises have not implemented tax finalizations for 10 years and still had transactions with other enterprises during that time, but when the tax agencies inspected the tax finalizations of those enterprises, their partners stopped operations, which led to the situation that those enterprises were considered as using illegal invoices and fined with very large amount. In order to remove difficulties for enterprises, the Tax agencies are requested to inspect the tax finalization at least every two years for enterprises to reduce risks and help businesses stabilize production and business. According to him, the frequent change of policies on tax refund also affects business and production plans of enterprises. Furthermore, it is necessary to have more liberal policies on tax refund for export enterprises, in case where there have changes in the transactions and enterprises do not collect sufficient money, the Tax agencies still solve the tax refund for enterprises to avoid double losses.

Concerning the tax administrative procedures, representatives of many enterprises also mentioned difficulties and obstacles. Mr. Vuong Chi Cuong, Director of Cuong Phat Textile and Textile Co., Ltd, said that his company is facing difficulties in the process of tax refund due to requiring verification at export border gate and verification of input invoices. However, the company is not active in time to resolve the verification of the above documents, they do not know how long the company will be refunded. Moreover, the company also cannot distinguish the difference between tax inspection and examination despite being examined and inspected.

To remove problems mentioned above, Mr. Tran Ngoc Tam, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department said that the lengthening of tax finalization examination makes enterprises to be fined and collected for many years due to the Law on Tax Administration regulating that enterprises must self-declare and self-pay the taxes and self-report the annual tax finalizations, and the Tax agencies are not permitted to inspect the annual tax finalizations.

In addition, due to limited human resources while the large number of businesses, the Tax agencies can only inspect the enterprises with signs of great risk. About tax refund, Mr. Tam admitted that in the past times, the tax refund for enterprises did not implement in a timely fashion due to many reasons of which there were some enterprises subject to refund first and inspect later but still want to inspect first and refund later that makes tax refund dossiers accrued, causing the delays. In the coming time, the Tax Department will deploy electronic tax refund, thereby the tax refund time will be shortened. The leaders of the Tax Department also pledged that, if any tax officers make difficulties affecting to the tax refund of enterprises, the Tax agencies will consider and strictly handle.

Business community acknowledges progress in tax procedures reform The business community acknowledged progress in the tax sector’s administrative reform but urged more efforts in improving ...

Recognizing the difficulties and obstacles of enterprises, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Quyet Tam asked the City People's Committee, the Tax Department and other relevant units to reform tax administrative procedures more drastically. Specifically, it must be "fairer" with enterprises in the procedures on tax refund, and simple, accurate and quick; and changes in tax policies and procedures must be updated to all enterprises as soon as possible. The tax finalization must also be implemented more closely to reduce unnecessary losses for enterprises.