Many solutions collected properly and fully into the state budget

Facilitating the operation of people and businesses is an effective way to reduce losses to the state budget. Photo: H.V.

Since the beginning of the year, the government leaders and the leaders of the Ministry of Finance have paid special attention to revenue collection. To reach and exceed the assigned budget, the "determination" of the Ministry of Finance has been concretized into key tasks and detailed solutions for implementation throughout the sector and brought many encouraging results.

Revenue-boosting reforms

Referring to the fight against revenue loss, it is important for the entire Financial sector to continuously focus on accelerating Public Administration Reform (PAR) in order to improve efficiency and ensure openness and transparency. Being considered as one of the Government's leading agencies in PAR, this work of the Finance sector has made a clear change. As in administration, many years ago, when the Government issued the Resolution No. 19 on improving the business environment and enhancing national competitiveness, the Ministry of Finance always pioneered specific plans to perform. In 2018, the Ministry also issued a program of action with 47 task groups, 87 solutions and 175 outputs. As a result, the reform of the financial sector was carried out smoothly, continuously and efficiently.

As a result, the Ministry of Finance has made a review to reduce 174 administrative procedures, simplify 898 administrative procedures; review 370 business investment conditions, propose the abolition of 99 conditions, simplify 89 conditions for business investment; To publicize the list of 105 administrative procedures which may be provided through public-utility post services within the scope of State management functions of the Ministry of Finance. To fully update the whole administrative procedures to the national database on administrative procedures as prescribed and publicized on the Finance Ministry's electronic portal and post them at the head offices of units directly dealing with administrative procedures, creating favorable conditions for people and businesses in the implementation of administrative procedures. The online services have been provided for 893 procedures, including 223 online public services level 1; 378 online public services level 2; 104 online public services level 3; 188 online public service level 4...

The online tax system has expanded to connect e-tax information between tax authorities, customs, treasury and commercial banks. The General Department of Taxation also extends electronic tax reimbursement, electronic services to individuals and organizations. The e-customs clearance and e-payment gateway implementation, VNACCS/VCIS system are deployed nationwide. The national one-door mechanism has connected 11 ministries together. The Customs Department has piloted the connection between the customs office, warehouse and port enterprises in Hai Phong to reduce the time for customs clearance and improve the efficiency of customs state management. The State Treasury has implemented TABMIS system smoothly and effectively, contributing to the centralized management, reducing administrative procedures in the transaction for the budget-using units and investors; at the same time, meet the requirement of providing timely information for budget management and administration at the central and local levels.

The application of information technology in the field of taxation, customs and other fields has been paid special attention by the Ministry of Finance and achieved many results through the provision of public services at levels 3 and 4, for declaration, submission and management of electronic tax, the implementation of the National One-door mechanism and one door ASEAN technical connection. With these efforts, the Financial sector has contributed significantly to the business environment of Vietnam in the past two years, which rose 23 ranks, ranking 68th out of 190 economies; the National competitiveness also increased five levels compared to 2016, ranking 55th out of 137 countries and territories.

According to the World Bank assessment, contributions to the improvement of the mentioned business environment include the tax and social security index (from ranking 167th to 86th), access to electricity (from ranking 96th to 64th)... Regarding customs procedures, the goal is to cut 50% of specialized inspection procedures.

Last year, the Finance sector also actively coordinated with ministries, branches, committees and local authorities, mobilized and took advantage of the participation of the whole political system, the support of business community and the people to perform well the direction and administration of state budget revenue right at the beginning of the year. In which, direct the tax office and customs to actively and resolutely implement measures to manage the collection, avoid losses, transfer pricing, smuggling, trade fraud, tax evasion; enforce tax debt collection, strengthen the inspection and examination of tax for enterprises.

Recent reforms of the Finance sector have promptly removed difficulties and obstacles, contributed to facilitating taxpayers, supported enterprises to develop their production and business, contributing to the completion and exceeding the target of economic growth for the whole year, bringing sustainable revenue to the state budget.

Collect trillions VND from debt and inspection

To avoid losses of revenue, a task which has always been of concern to the public is tax debt collection. Presenting at the conference at the ongoing 5th session, the Minister of Finance - Mr. Dinh Tien Dung shared a lot of results in this field. The Ministry said that despite the high debt ratio (over 7%), thanks to the Government's fierce support, the participation of localities, the situation has changed positively. The tax debt has fallen both in absolute terms and in proportion to total state budget revenue, of which the tax debt fell from 81.97 trillion VND in 2016 to 73.1 trillion VND by the end of 2017, equivalent to 10.8%.

In particular, the amount of recoverable tax debt decreased from 31.7 trillion VND in 2016 to 26 trillion VND in 2017, equivalent to a decrease of 18%, accounting for around 2.5% of total state budget revenue. Together with that, the tax debt collection increased well over the years: 39.7 trillion VND in 2016 and 44.77 trillion VND in 2017. Out of the remaining tax debt, the amount of irrecoverable tax debt was 31.5 trillion VND by the end of 2017, increased by 6 trillion VND compared to the end of 2016, accounting for 43% of total debt. These were the tax debts of the dead, missing people, dissolved enterprises without any property to recover..., but have not yet been deleted.

Along with the recovery of debts, the inspection and examination of the whole financial sector is also paid attention. According to the Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Finance – Mr. Tran Van Vuong, from 2016 to March 2018, the whole Finance sector has carried out 194,230 inspections and 31,873 arrests through anti-smuggling investigation.

The inspection and examination results have detected and recommended the handling of organizations and individuals committing acts of violating the law provisions on tax, customs, standards, norms, regimes on finance, state budget, public assets..., with the amount of over 121,188 billion VND (45,471 billion VND was collected to the state budget, reduced state budget expenditure 1,155 billion VND, administrative fine was 4,089 billion VND, reducing losses were 61,062 billion VND, other activities were 9.411 billion VND). The amount collected, paid to the state budget was 31.974 billion VND.

The tax authorities at all levels have transferred 5,685 dossiers showing signs of law violation to the police offices for handling according to the regulations; the police arrested 26 cases, prosecuted 22 defendants, recovered 4 billion VND (conducted the criminal proceedings to 23 cases, recovered 4 billion VND, prosecuted 20 defendants in 2016; conducted the criminal proceedings to 3 cases, prosecuted 2 defendants in 2017). The Customs authorities have prosecuted 97 cases and transferred them to the other authorities to investigate, prosecuted 147 cases showing signs of law violation. Thus, through inspections, the state budget also collects more trillions every year.

The total state budget revenue in 2016 was 1,107,381 billion VND, up 9.2% compared to the estimate.

The total state budget revenue in 2017 reached nearly 1.3 million billion VND, exceeding about 5% compared to the National Assembly estimates.

The total state budget revenue in the first five months of 2018 reached 549 trillion VND, equaling 41.6% of the estimate, up 13.6% over the same period of 2017.