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Attending the Conference, on the side of the Ministry of Finance, were Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai; Ms. Nguyen Thanh Hang, Deputy Director of Tax Policy Department; Mr. Dang Ngoc Minh, Deputy Director General of the General Department of Taxation; and Mr. Mai Xuan Thanh, Deputy Director General of General Department of Customs.

On the side of VCCI, there were Mr. Hoang Quang Phong, Vice President of VCCI, and nearly 500 enterprises.

Strong reforms and accompanying businesses

Speaking at the opening of the conference, VCCI’s Vice Chairman Hoang Quang Phong said that this was an annual event of great significance in expressing the determination of the Ministry of Finance to carry outprocedures, creating afair and transparent environment for economic activities, improving public-private relations for the country’s development.

According to Mr. Hoang Quang Phong, the Tax and Customs sectorsplay important roles in production and business process of businesses, the state's revenue and in creating openness and convenience in the business environment.

The business community has always recognized the strong reforms of the Ministry of Finance, particularly the Tax and Customs sectors in recent years in accompanying, sympathizing, sharing and guiding procedures for businesses in a timely manner. In particular, many problems reflected by businesses have been listened to, discussed and solved, bringing great peace of mind to the business community.

The conference. Photo: Thuy Linh

In the current situation, when the economy in general and business and production of businesses in particular were seriously affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference aims to exchange and discuss issues related to operations of Tax and Customs sectors in the relationship with the business community, contributing to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of state management and supporting and creating an increasingly favorable business environment. In particular, removing difficulties, contributing to resuming the business and production activities of businesses affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tax and customs agencies have applied advanced IT to the implementation of procedures, significantly helping businesses overcome difficulties and "stand firm" during the pandemic.

Speaking at the conference, Deputy Minister of Finance Vu Thi Mai said that 2020 was a year with many changes for the economy when the Covid-19 outbreak caused business and production activities to face a lot of difficulties. To try to overcome this challenge, following the instructions of the Government, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Finance, the Customs sector has been implementing many practical solutions to facilitate trade, support businesses to recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and promote production, business, recovery and socio-economic development.

Specifically, the Ministry of Finance has extended the time limit for tax and land rent fee payment to those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic; reduced corporate income tax payable in 2020 for enterprises, cooperatives, service delivery units and other organizations; continued exempting agricultural land use tax until the end of 2025; reduced the registration fee rate for domestically manufactured and assembled cars until the end of December 31, 2020; exempted import tax for items to serve disease prevention such as medical masks, raw materials for the production of masks, antiseptic hand sanitizer; reduced import tax for some commodity groups to remove difficulties for businesses and promoted the development of agriculture, mechanics, supporting industries and auto industry.

Deputy Minister Vu ThiMai spokeat the conference. Photo: Thuy Linh

Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai emphasized that, despite difficulties in 2020, the state budget revenue for the whole period still basically met the set targets. The rate of state budget revenue from 2016 to 2020 is about 24.5% of GDP, the rate of revenue from taxes and fees account for 20.4% of GDP.

Revenues from taxes and fees have been increasingly sustainable, ensuring investment and development, maintaining the apparatus and ensuring social welfare and national security and defense. In order to achieve the above positive results in recent years, there has been a great contribution from the business community in makingtheir best efforts to comply with solutions and directions for socio-economic development of the Party, National Assembly and Government.

Professionalism, transparency and efficiency further improved

According to the representative of the Legal Department (General Department of Customs), the Customs agency has always encouraged the business community to cooperate to contribute their opinions to build a fair and powerful Customs. The Customs agency has proactively and actively set up connection channels so that the business community can promptly reflect and comment on the activities of the Customs units at all levels. In particular, the Customs sector has always identified administrative reform as a key political task that must be performed regularly and continuously, making an important contribution to the administrative reforms of the Finance sector.

In addition to completing the legal corridor on customs legislation, the Customs agency has enhanced the application of IT in customs operations. This is provides "leverage" to create favorable conditions for businesses to improve their competitiveness and achieve growth in production and business activities.

Mr. Hoang Quang Phong, Vice Chairman of VCCI spoke at the conference. Photo: Thuy Linh

To conduct reforms and modernization of management methods towards modernity and in line with international practices, with the motto of listening, understanding, sharing, cooperation and companionship, the Customs unitsat all levels have regularly organized meetings and dialogue conferences to disseminate legal policies in many different forms, attracting the attention and participation of the business community.

Alongside the activities of the financial sector, the tax agency has annually maintained regular dialogues on tax policies and laws with taxpayers. Through quarterly and annual dialogue conferences with taxpayers, the tax units from the General Department level to the branch level have promptly disseminated new legal documents on tax, revised documents which have been issued and will come into effect; promptly removed problems and guided the procedures for taxpayers; recognized and solved people's comments on the service attitude of tax officers.

The organization of dialogue conferences with taxpayers in recent years of the tax agency has created favorable conditions for taxpayers to fulfill their obligations to the state budget, contributed to creating favorable conditions to encourage people and businesses to continue to invest, expand production and business, create jobs, and ensure social security.

Although the effectiveness from the conferences as well as the support for businesses amid the Covid-19 pandemic is realized, tax and customs policies and procedures must be continuously improved and updated to meet practical requirements while production and business activities are always vibrant and diversified. Therefore, difficulties and problems in applying provisions of the policies and administrative procedures into practice are unavoidable.

Through the conference, the Ministry of Finance is ready to listen to comments from businesses to continue to improve policies and answer questions and problems of businesses, creating conditions tosolve difficulties and problems of enterprises about tax and customs policies and administrative procedures, promoting business and production activities of businesses and contributing to developing the investment climate in Vietnam.

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In order for the policies to really be effective in practice, the Ministry of Finance hopes to continue to receive many frank and constructive contributions from the business community about Vietnam's tax and customs policies and procedures, in order to continue to reform and makethem more transparent andspecific, to help taxpayers implement tax policies sufficiently, quickly and conveniently, contributing to encouraging investment, exports and complying with international practices and commitments in the process of Vietnam's regional and global economic integration.