Advantages and disadvantages of tax collection through banks

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The bank clerk is guiding clients about tax electronic system at BIDV. (Photo: T.HANG).

As a representative of Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) said, feedback from customers shows that the provisions of Circular 184 for taxpayers has created favorable conditions for taxpayers in the simplification of administrative procedures, minimizing time of customs procedures, especially the clearance time of receiving the information to pay taxes, helping businesses reduce the costs. Besides, the taxpayers don’t have to fill in information related to state budget revenue code, code of collecting agencies, accounting treasury revenue code (this kind of information will be determined by agencies and state management agencies), etc, which reduces errors.

In addition, the representative of Agribank also said that the query information related to accounting state budget revenues (declarations, date of declarations, revenue account code, code of collecting agencies ...) helped bank officials reduce the time to add information on the documents of taxpayers. Also, banks can upgrade the portal system, the utility to take care of customers better.

About the advantages when implementing the provisions of tax payment under Circular 184, the representative of Dong Nai Customs Department said, when businesses pay tax at the bank, taxpayer data on electronic customs portal is automatically updated and automatically settled all debts on accounting programs. Thus, the clearance of goods is faster and more convenient.

The representative of Quang Tri Customs Department stated that the new regulations of tax payment have shortened the time to transfer documents from the State Treasury to the customs authorities, not only rapidly reduced debt for businesses but also reduced the time, released the goods quickly, minimized the cost. Also, the coordination between customs and commercial banks should solve problems and errors in tax payment accounts much faster.

Apart from these advantages, implementation of these new regulations faced many difficulties and obstacles, which was commented by Customs in the provinces, cities and banks that the problems were mainly due to transmission line, systematic errors etc.

As the representative of HCM City Customs Department said, now many enterprises pay taxes through banks which have signed an agreement to cooperate with the customs authorities, therefore the collection of the payment is more convenient. However, there are some cases that companies paid taxes before, providing original proof of payment for the customs authorities but on the portal or accounting systems, there is no payment information or declarations.

The reason for this condition may derive from additional declarations of enterprises, banks do not update data timely when receiving information of enterprises, or may be because of the faulty customs system, or incorrect filling of businesses taxes, wrong type of code, code of Treasury pending with the customs control, etc. Therefore, according to HCM City Customs Department, in order to ensure strict implementation of the tax obligations, the General Department of Vietnam Customs should provide instructions on how to exchange information with the banks and the Treasury in the case of losing information in the centralized accounting system.

There are many customs departments or branches encountering these obstacles. The representative of Dong Nai Customs Department said there is only 1 bank remittance bill but the accounting system updated 2 times for the same payment of declaration. Or the information on payment remittance paper of enterprises is full but when banking data transferring to the Treasury misses the information such as tax identification number of businesses, number of declarations or mistyping of taxes, which makes accounting treasury immediately inform the Customs to solve. This has affected the debt relief of businesses.

In response to concerns that many enterprises encountered, the representative of Quang Tri Customs Department said at locations of state revenue, banks or Treasury, there were no staff on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays, while customs officers still worked on these days, which makes import-export enterprises faced many difficulties in customs procedures.

Besides, according to Quang Tri Customs Department, as stipulated in Article 16 of Circular 184, when taxpayers pay in cash but the State Treasury or banks are not authorized to collect revenue at the location of customs offices, so customs officers must register to collect the tax and transfer all the money to the account of the Treasury, which has created a huge workload and risk to the customs authorities.

Also, the representatives of Agribank said that the bank faced many obstacles in the query data on the customs declaration of taxpayers, which is not updated fully or properly and there is no tax liabilities on the portal of the General Department of Vietnam Customs. Or the information submitted by the customer is incomplete, the bank can not query the General Department of Vietnam Customs. Thus, the message from the bank sending to the General Department of Vietnam Customs will not be accepted.

In addition, the representative of Vietnam Export Import Commercial Bank (Eximbank) reflected, when the customer had to pay taxes for a declaration, but paid additional tax liabilities, the bank sent a message payment, but the customs system displayed the error "bank declaration was coordinated collection and payment, payment papers do not currently match the paper's bank deposit paid". Or in the case, the bank transferred payment messages successfully to the customs authorities but not to transfer money to the Treasury, then enterprises wanted to change tax payment information (subsection/ amount). There is no specific instructions for these cases, so banks do not know how to handle.

About the problems which enterprises encountered, the bank representative of Southeast Asia Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SeaBank) proposed that the General Department of Vietnam Customs should establish a support committee online to support banks in the process of implementing the internal cooperation of collection, especially handling special inquiries of taxpayers.

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Up to now, Circular 184/2015/ TT-BTC has been in place for more than 7 months. All the feedback of the customs in provinces, cities and commercial banks revenues was submitted to the General Department of Vietnam Customs to find ideal solutions as soon as possible.