Amending regulations on enforcement measures in tax administration

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It is proposed that the Tax authority choose to apply appropriate enforcement measures. Photo: Internet

According to the Ministry of Finance, in reality, the application of the two enforcement measures of asset distrain and third-party collection is very difficult to implement and is ineffective.

Accordingly, the asset distrain measure often only stops at the step of verifying information; meanwhile, the third-party collection measure has only been implemented in a few cases because the third party has a due debt to the taxpayer.

The reason is that when the Tax authority verifies information, taxpayers and related units do not provide information or provide information that there are no assets.

In addition, to implement this measure, it depends a lot on the related units; the Tax authority must have warehouses and human resources to store and preserve the seized assets before auctioning them (especially for assets such as machinery, equipment, goods), and handle losses, damages, and deterioration.

The Ministry of Finance said that implementing this measure will be very complicated and take a lot of time, effort, and money.

In addition, there is currently no principle for taxpayers who disperse assets or abscond, they can choose to immediately apply appropriate enforcement measures among the 7 enforcement measures to promptly collect tax debts for the state budget.

Therefore, the Ministry of Finance proposes to amend and supplement Clause 3, Article 125 of the Law on Tax Administration in the direction that the Tax Authority can flexibly apply coercive measures at the same time.

In cases where there is sufficient information and conditions, the coercive measures of asset seizure and third-party collection shall be applied.

In cases where tax debtors have acts of dispersing assets or absconding, appropriate coercive measures shall be immediately applied to ensure timely collection of tax arrears into the state budget.

According to the drafting agency, this proposal overcomes the difficulties and shortcomings in the actual implementation of coercive measures, improving the effectiveness of coercive tax debt collection.