VietNamNet Bridge – Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung has pledged a significant reduction of the time required for corporate tax declarations and payments, and an elimination of unnecessary procedures to support businesses in the final months of the year.

Tran Thi Le Nga (C), deputy head of the HCMC Department of Tax, fields the questions raised by businesses at a meeting in HCMC last week

Dung told a “Citizens ask, ministers answer” program aired on VTV on Sunday evening that many administrative procedures concerning tax have been streamlined in the past years in order to cut the time for tax declarations and payment in Vietnam though the time is still longer than in regional countries.

Dung cited figures of the World Bank (WB) as saying that tax declarations and payments in Vietnam took 1,050 hours in 2008, 941 hours in 2010 and 872 hours in 2012. The durations included the time for social insurance payouts, which were around 335 hours. Therefore, 537 hours were need for tax declarations and payments in Vietnam in 2012.

The Ministry of Finance has closely coordinated with the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the agency designated by WB to assess the tax payment durations in Vietnam. Besides, it has worked with business associations to come up with specific solutions and action plans to reduce the number of tax declarations and payment procedures.

According to Dung, at the Government’s regular meeting last month, the ministry presented a draft resolution on eliminating barriers and promoting development of enterprises with a focus on drastically reforming tax and customs procedures. The draft resolution covers three main groups of solutions to reducing the number of tax declarations, unnecessary procedures when enterprises make declarations, and reviewing regulations.

“With strong measures adopted, we can cut the tax declaration and payment time by 290 hours from 537 hours in 2012 as calculated by the WB,” Dung said.

Regarding existing problems with complicated procedures and attitudes of tax officers, the ministry is deploying several solutions. In addition to simplifying tax payment procedures, the ministry is reviewing the durations of social insurance payouts.

Tax procedures to be made simpler

The Ministry of Finance’s draft amendments to regulations on taxation and tax management will help companies save much time and cost from completing relevant procedures if they are adopted, said a deputy head of the HCMC Department of Tax.

Tran Thi Le Nga told a meeting between the department and representatives of 300 enterprises in HCMC last week that the ministry and the General Department of Tax have drawn up a draft circular providing more guidelines on taxation and tax management with an aim to simplify tax procedures for corporate taxpayers.

The ministry and the general department are collecting opinions from relevant agencies and tax departments in cities and provinces as well as enterprises to make necessary adjustments before the draft circular is issued in October as planned.

The draft circular will contain important amendments and supplements to the existing circulars on tax management, value added tax (VAT), tax registration and invoices.

For Circular 156 on tax management, the draft amendments clarify tax declaration procedures for invoices. It will allow enterprises not to make bills for the products and services they sell and buy among others.

For tax payment in circulars 08 and 85, the amendments will lead to a considerable revision of removing the regulations which require enterprises to specify the code of the agency that collects their tax, receipt list and those which make businesses confused.

A report on the business environment of International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank showed that Vietnam was ranked 149th among 189 countries and territories in terms of tax convenience this year, falling four places from last year and staying at the bottom of the ranking table of countries in the region.

As ordered by the Government, the tax sector has to reduce the time for finishing tax procedures to 337 hours from 872 hours until year-end and to 171 hours, the average level of the countries in the ASEAN-6 bloc of Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, by next year as well as have 95% of tax declarations made by enterprises via the Internet by year-end.    

SGT/VNN