The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has released a document replying to suggestions on amending and supplementing articles of seven laws, including the Law on Tax Management.

One of the noteworthy points of the draft law is on giving immunity to tax officers if they have correctly and fully complied with regulations. In other words, tax officers will not have to take responsibility if enterprises commit fraud in making tax declarations.

According to MOF, though e-invoices have been applied nationwide, many illegal invoice trading cases have been discovered by the police. E-invoices do not prevent fraud, because taxation agencies cannot make a conclusion unless they can verify and investigate enterprises’ business activities, though enterprises are required to send e-invoices to taxation agencies.

The ministry said current laws about tax management do not clearly specify the responsibilities of tax officers, thereby affecting their conduct when they perform duties, especially in tax refunds.

Tax officers cannot control all data, while the automatic system cannot control all actual transactions and find instances of tax fraud.

Since taxation agencies don’t have the function of conducting investigations, it takes a lot of time to check on taxpayers’ trading activities with the support of agencies (commercial banks, carriers, the police and customs agencies, etc).

With the "tax refund first, inspection later" regime, there must be detailed provisions about the responsibilities of taxation agencies. Tax officers only watch over information shown in enterprises’ documents, and they don’t have to be responsible when enterprises commit fraud on tax declarations and provide wrong information, which leads to wrong decisions on tax refunds.

In early August 2024, the General Department of Taxation (GDT) sent Dispatch No 3385 on checking and handling illegal invoices to cities and provinces’ taxation bodies

GDT said it had received Judgment No115 dated December 29, 2023 of the Phu Tho People's Court on the results of the first-instance trial in the case of illegal invoice trading in Phu Tho province and many other provinces and cities across the country.

The court found that from December 2020 to October 2022, Nguyen Minh Tu directly or through intermediaries used 637 companies to illegally sell 1,025,712 VAT invoices to 88,053 units/organizations, and established six finance companies to send payment regularly via banks.

Luong Bang