More options for implementing tax obligations for e-commerce platforms

the option of declaring and paying taxes on behalf of business individuals will be more convenient for e-commerce floor owners. Source: Internet

One of the important amendments in Circular No. 100/2021/TT-BTC amending and supplementing a number of articles of Circular No. 40/2021/TT-BTC is that instead of forcing e-commerce floor owners to make tax declarations and pay tax on behalf of business individuals through the floor on the basis of authorization as prescribed in the provisions of civil law, according to Circular 100/2021/TT-BTC, the owner of the e-commerce floor has two options.

Firstly, the owner of an e-commerce trading floor can declare and pay taxes on behalf of business individuals if authorized.

Secondly, if the owner of an e-commerce trading floor does not declare tax and pay taxes on behalf of business individuals through the floor on the basis of authorization as prescribed in the provisions of the civil law, the tax department shall coordinate with the e-commerce services in sharing and providing information of business individuals operating businesses through the floor by following the guidance of the General Department of Taxation for tax management in accordance with the law.

The information to be provided includes: name of the booth/name of the booth owner, tax code, identity card number/citizen identification number, address, email, phone number, sales revenue.

Thus, the new regulations in Circular 100/2021/TT-BTC have removed obstacles in Circular 40/2021/TT-BTC, thereby helping e-commerce floors when they are not required to declare tax and pay tax on behalf of the seller, but still ensure against loss of tax collection or tax evasion and tax fraud.

Speaking with the press about this, Ms. Ta Thi Phuong Lan, Deputy Director of the Tax Administration Department of small, medium-sized enterprises and business households and individuals (General Department of Taxation), said that if individuals have authorization and an agreement, the owner of the e-commerce floor will declare and make the payment on behalf of the business individual. If there is no authorization, the declaration and submission will not be required.

However, according to the General Department of Taxation, the option of declaring and paying taxes on behalf of business individual will be more convenient for e-commerce floor owners because the option of sharing seller information with the tax agency will take a lot of human resources than the other option.

According to Ms. Lan, if declaring or paying tax on behalf of sellers, the e-commerce floor owner only has to do it monthly or quarterly and only has to do it once. Thus, e-commerce floor owners will not have to provide information.

If providing seller information, the exchanges will have to provide information to each transaction, but the number of e-commerce transactions on the exchanges currently amounts to 3.5 million transactions per day. Providing such information, data is significant, and it will consume a lot of human and material costs.

"With the declaration and payment of tax on behalf of the seller, the tax liability belongs to the individual seller, and does not increase the tax liability of the floor owner," Lan said.