Register online business tax: Should be voluntary to avoid penalty

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Cuc

Dear Madam, the Tax sector is promoting to collect individual and online business via the internet. How do you appraise about this activity?

In my opinion, the management and tax collection for online business through social networks is an objective inevitably. So, obviously, online businesses have to pay tax as normal business

The General Department of Taxation has issued a document to instruct the local taxation departments to require individuals and online businesses to register and pay taxes. Among them, besides the enterprise, individuals only run online sales; there are also businesses and individuals that are doing normal business and doing business online. For the second type, they must declare, combine both business revenue on the internet and the traditional business.

In cases that the total turnover of both business lines is less than 100 million vnd, they are entitled to tax exemption. In all other cases that are over 100 million vnd of turnover, the tax must be declared. If they are not implemented, tax authorities will take coordinated measures to require individuals and businesses to perform equally according to the tax law. Obviously, that will facilitate to enterprises to develop, while ensuring equality between traditional business and online business.

In fact, the households and traditional businesses have to rent premises, hire employees and pay taxes. Thus there is no reason for doing online business that saves site rental costs and labor costs are not paid.

Recently, the HCMC Taxation Department has received the registration of individuals, online businesses through the Internet. However, so far, the statistics have not been as expected. Hanoi City has just started to implement, so it does not specific statistics. According to you, if we want to successfully implement this tax collection, what do the tax authorities need to?

Firstly, the propaganda and encouraging individuals to self-registration are the most important. At a certain time, individuals and online businesses still do not register, the tax authorities will be forced to use the allowed measures such as inspection even tax enforcement to coerce households, individuals on a ground with discipline, re-equality of tax.

Do you have any recommendations for individuals and online businesses without tax registration?

I think that households and enterprises that have received notice from the tax authority should voluntarily declare themselves instead of being applied "hard" measures from the Tax Authority. In fact, besides the mobilization of available inspectors, the tax authorities can also coordinate with other competent agencies such as management media agencies, credit institutions, even collaborates with network data security to recover data that individuals purposely delete to recalculate taxable revenue for retrospective collection.

When individuals and businesses have not voluntarily, the tax arrears are also accompanied by fine from 1 to 3 times. It is quite heavy. Therefore, individuals and businesses should voluntarily register and declare tax under the guidance of the tax authorities.

Thank you!