Reform the tax debt management process

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Deputy Director General Hoang Viet Cuong addressed the online conference. Photo: H.N

The conference was attended by GDVC’s Deputy Director General Hoang Viet Cuong, representatives of local customs departments, customs branches and officers in charge of tax debt management.

At the conference, Deputy Director General Hoang Viet Cuong said that the Customs sector has focused on developing plans to collect and settle overdue debts to provide practical solutions, implemented comprehensive tax debt management, and met social justice goals among taxpayers fulfilling their obligations to the state budget.

In addition, the Customs has requested local customs departments to complete dossiers for entities eligible for debt relief under provisions of Resolution No.94/2019/QH14 and the Law on Tax administration 2019, which took effect from July 1, 2020, to reduce tax debt.

Local customs departments have strictly supervised tax debts, monitored the results of implementing measures for tax debt collection and enforcement, provided measures to collect tax debt, and regularly implemented them until the debts decreased.

However, preliminary statistics show that as of December 31, the tax arrears and provisional tax debts managed by the Customs saw a year-on-year increase of 2% to VND7,166 billion, equal to 1.64% compared with the total revenue of the Customs sector. As a result, the overdue tax debt amount was VND5,716 billion, accounting for 1.3% of the total revenue, and the provisional tax debt amount was VND1,450 billion.

The arising in tax debts results from the customs inspection and post-clearance audit to impose taxes for some enterprises by local customs departments, leading to the increase in the tax debt amount.

According to Deputy Director General Hoang Viet Cuong, the tax debt management and settlement by the Customs sector still faces shortcomings during tax debt collection and enforcement. The assignment, arrangement and rotation of officers in charge of the classification and supervision of tax debt are not reasonable. The I.T. system does not meet the requirements. In addition, the coordination among management agencies is still not unified.

Therefore, to reduce tax debt and prevent arisen tax debt, the Deputy Director General requested units in the whole sector to collect tax debts effectively under the provisions of the Law on Tax Administration 2019, Decree 126/2020/ND-CP and Circular 06/2021/TT-BTC.

The units should monitor and classify accurately tax debt amounts to provide effective measures for handling tax debts; assign specific tasks to each officer. Review I.T. system to meet the freezing debt process and minimize limitations.

The units need to review officers towards working stably. The Import and Export Duty Department, the Customs Control and Supervision Department, and the Customs I.T. and Statistics Department should instruct each unit and officer. Local customs departments should coordinate with the Import and Export Duty Department and the Customs Control and Supervision Department to launch the debt management process and remove problems (if any).

For the units to better understand the process of managing tax debt and other revenues for import and export goods (referred to as the debt management process) issued together with Decision No. 2317/QD-TCHQ dated On October 24, 2022, the representative of the Import-Export Tax Department said that the Debt Management Process is issued to replace the process issued together with Decision 1503/QD-TCHQ dated May 18, 2018.

Accordingly, the Debt Management Process aims to provide specific instructions on the steps and operations for the Customs to classify, monitor, collect and handle tax debts and other revenues as per the provisions of the Law on Tax Administration 2019 and Decree 126/2020/ND-CP and relevant legal documents. In addition, take measures to enforce to recover tax debts.

The debt management process will also strictly review debt groups to ensure debt classification and implement enforcement measures for debt collection.

The debt management process consists of 3 parts, 3 chapters with 29 articles specifically guiding the classification of debts, making dossier and urgent debt collection, and implementing coercive enforcement of administrative decisions on tax administration.

The arising debts are classified into the group of receivable debts, and the Customs will summarize, monitor and collect in a timely fashion.

For overdue debts such as 90- days overdue debt and overdue for payment of administrative violation, the Customs will summarize to implement appropriate measures.