10 outstanding events of the Tax industry in 2023

	Persistent difficulties in the collection of taxes of the tax industry
	VND274 trillion should be collected, the tax industry "reviews" 561 big corporations and companies
	The Tax industry has comprehensive digital transformation

In 2023, the Tax industry has successfully completed its political tasks, making an important contribution to ensuring the great balances of State finance and budget. Photo: Internet

1. Completing budget collection tasks

In 2023, it was predicted that economic difficulties will continue to directly affect production and business, so the General Department of Taxation proactively advised the National Assembly and the Government to promulgate tax support policies and identified these policies as urgent and fundamental solutions. Thus, the Tax industry urgently and effectively implemented the policies, thereby providing timely support to help people and the business community quickly overcome difficulties in the recovery and production and business development.

Regarding budget collection, under the leadership of the Party, the direction and drastic management of the National Assembly, the Government, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Finance, the Tax industry made efforts to overcome difficulties, actively and flexibly deployed key solutions to both contribute to 'nourishing revenues' and try to exceed the assigned estimate.

The efforts of the business community in production and business together with the initiative, flexibility and determination of the entire Tax industry resulted in 2023 revenue of VND1,396,430 billion as of December 20, 2023, exceeding 1.7% of the estimate. Accordingly, the total revenue in 2023 is forecast to exceed the target assigned by the National Assembly, the Government and the Ministry of Finance by about 5.5% of the estimate, equal to 95.4% of the 2022 result.

With this result, the Tax industry has excellently completed its political tasks, making an important contribution to ensuring the great balances of the State's finance and budget, stabilizing the macroeconomy, and ensuring social security.

2. Deploying tax policies to promptly support businesses and people

The Tax industry proactively proposed and advised on the promulgation and implementation of policies on deferral, exemption and reduction of tax and land rent to support people and businesses. Accordingly, the total supportive value reached VND165,026 billion including the deferred amount of VND106,946 billion and the exempted or reduced amount of VND58,080 billion.

Determining these policies as urgent and fundamental solutions to support the business community and people to overcome difficulties and restore production and business, the Tax industry urgently implemented the policies, thereby promptly supporting production and business recovery and development to bring benefits to the business community and people and make important contributions to budget revenue, contributing to macroeconomic stability and social security.

3. Accelerating the implementation process of the Tax System Reform Strategy

Implementing the tax system reform strategy to 2030 promulgated together with Decision No. 508/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister, the General Department of Taxation submitted to the Ministry of Finance an Action Program to implement the tax system reform strategy to 2030 and tax system reform plan to 2025.

To ensure continuity, consistency and compliance with the set goals, the General Department of Taxation established a Steering Committee to implement the strategy at the General Department of Taxation and at the tax departments to strengthen advisory work for the People's Committees of provinces and centrally run cities to direct the implementation of tax system reform until 2030.

4. Being a leading unit in digital transformation

The year 2023 marks a great step forward in the process of digital transformation of tax management, such as: launching the business household digital map; operating a database analysis and e-invoice management system based on big data (Big Data) and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance tax and invoice management and strictly control and combat fraud in tax refunds; digitalizing tax management for e-commerce activities and business on digital platforms and expanding the e-invoice program from cash registers, using e-invoices for retail trading of petroleum.

Continuing for two consecutive years (2021-2022), the General Department of Taxation was honored by the Ministry of Information and Communications as a leading unit in digital transformation. In 2023, the General Department of Taxation continues to be honored by the Ministry of Information and Communications the "VAT tax declaration service under deduction method for production and business activities" as one of 4 excellent online public services that best meets the criteria of "full-online public service" and "all people".

In particular, with the selection of 19 applications researched and developed by tax departments themselves, the Tax industry has shown that the IT application to management is a step in concretizing the comprehensive digital transformation goal of the Ministry of Finance and the Government.

5. National Assembly adopted Resolution on global minimum tax

To ensure Vietnam's legitimate rights and interests, and create trust for multinational corporations in expanding their investment in Vietnam, the Ministry of Finance assigned the General Department of Taxation to preside over research and assessment of impacts and learn experience in developing a global minimum tax policy.

On November 29, 2023, at the 6th Session, the 15th National Assembly officially passed Resolution No. 107/2023/QH15 on the application of additional corporate income tax according to global anti-base erosion rules.

This is a necessary step and with its application from January 1, 2024, Vietnam affirms the country’s position and taxing rights, contributing to strengthening international integration and complying with international practices.

Accordingly, Vietnam will apply two regulations: Income Inclusion Rule (IIR) applicable to Vietnamese corporations investing abroad and Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT) applicable to multinational corporations which have production and business activities in Vietnam.

6. Accompanying and honoring taxpayers who strive to overcome difficulties and make great contributions to the state budget

Implementing the motto "Putting taxpayers as the heart of service", the entire Tax industry developed more communication and support methods based on digital platforms to expand access to taxpayers. In particular, facing prolonged difficult developments in the economy, the tax industry promptly honored and praised thousands of businesses and entrepreneurs who have made great efforts to overcome difficulties, complied with tax laws and made great contributions to the State budget.

Along with announcing the ranking list of the 1,000 largest corporate income tax payers in Vietnam, the General Department of Taxation organized a conference to honor typical taxpayers with great contributions to the state budget in the 2020-2022 period. This activity not only shows the Tax authorities' appreciation for the business community's contributions, but also creates a spillover to other taxpayers to o improve and comply well with tax policies.

7. Revenue surge sharply in the field of e-commerce and business on digital platforms

The Tax industry continues to see many results in tax management for e-commerce activities and foreign suppliers. According to statistics, up to now, there have been 74 foreign suppliers who made tax registration, declaration and payment through a website for foreign suppliers. The total paid tax amount by foreign suppliers is VND8,096 billion, of which VND6,896 billion was paid directly through the website and VND1,200 billion VND paid by authorized Vietnamese parties.

Regarding the e-commerce portal, by the end of 2023, there were 357 e-commerce trading floors. The amount of tax declared by businesses and individuals engaging in business activities on e-commerce trading floors in 2023 rose year-on-year. In 2023, revenue from e-commerce for domestic organizations and individuals reached VND536.5 billion. At the same time, the Tax agency imposed a fine of VND275 billion on 179 businesses and 1,061 individuals dealing with business on the e-commerce trading floors. To continue to strengthen tax management, in 2024, the General Department of Taxation will continue to provide unified guidance on receiving and processing information from domestic e-commerce trading floors.

8. Operating the e-invoice system effectively to prevent invoice trading and applying risk management to improve efficiency in anti-loss of revenue

To continue to improve the efficiency of management to prevent revenue loss, the General Department of Taxation has researched and issued Decision No. 18/QD-TCT dated January 12, 2023 on the process of applying risk management in tax administration, Decision No. 86/QD-TCT dated February 8, 2023 on procedures for collecting and exploiting information for risk management; Decision No. 575/QD-TCT dated May 10, 2023 on procedures for applying risk management to evaluate and identify taxpayers with signs of risk in the management and use of invoices.

The Tax industry effectively exploits the e-invoice system to prevent invoice trading

9. Reforming administrative procedures and launching a centralized data management application on staff work throughout the Tax industry

The Tax industry promoted the implementation of comprehensive and effective administrative reform, creating a favorable, fair and transparent production and business environment for the business community. To date, the number of administrative procedures continues to be reduced from 304 to 235 and is publicly updated on the National Public Service Portal and on e-portals/websites of the Tax agency.

Deploying the Project to develop an application of electronic population data, identification and authentication to serve national digital transformation in the 2022-2025 period, with a vision to 2030 according to Decision No. 06/QD-TTg dated January 6, 2022 of the Prime Minister, the General Department of Taxation has enhanced coordination with the Ministry of Public Security to standardize personal tax code information and population database to uniformly use identification codes as tax codes.​

To unify centralized data management of staff, work throughout the industry, the General Department of Taxation deployed an application for digitizing documents to facilitate management and unify the database to serve management of organizational structure, staffing, training, rotating, mobilizing, and changing positions of cadres, civil servants, and public employees throughout the industry.

10. Vietnam is the 147th member of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters

On March 22, 2023 in Paris, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) held a signing ceremony for the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAAC) with Vietnam. MAAC was jointly developed by the OECD and the European Council (EC) in 1988 and was amended by the 2010 Protocol to expand to non-OECD and European Union (EU) member countries.

This is the most comprehensive multilateral international legal framework today, covering all forms of international cooperation on tax administration to address tax evasion and avoidance and other forms of non-compliance, thereby strengthening international cooperation in tax information exchange and helping quickly increase the tax information exchange network with MAAC participants.