Amendment of the Law on Tax Administration: Towards the inspection and examination by electronic means

By the end of September, the whole tax branch carried out 58,862 inspections. Photo: T.L.

Increasing budget revenue by tax inspection and examination

According to the latest data of the General Department of Taxation, in the first nine months of the year, the whole tax branch has actively carried out the inspection and examination according to the plan and the direction of the Government and the Ministry of Finance. The entire tax sector has carried out 58,862 inspections. These inspections were only 65.98% of the plan in 2018 (58,862 enterprises / 89,212 enterprises). The total tax increase by inspection and examination is over 10.3 trillion, reduced deductions by 952 billion, reduced loss by over 16.3 billion. The total amount of tax paid to the budget is VND 5,810 billion.

In addition, by the end of September, the tax office has checked 347,479 tax declaration dossiers at the tax office, 55.66% compared with the same period in 2017. Dealing and adjusting the budget to 298 billion, deducting VND 49 billion, and reducing losses VND 346 billion. Through inspection and examination of tax declaration dossiers at tax offices, the taxpayers have been detected making errors and / or frauds by adjusting and decreasing taxable amounts for tax declaration or assessment.

The actual data of above tax administration showed that the inspection and examination by specialized agencies of the Tax Department has made many important achievements, contributing positively to organizing the implementation of regulations. Tax law; This contributes to improve the compliance of taxpayers. At the same time, detecting and correcting errors and violations in the tax declaration, calculation and payment activities of taxpayers; Contributing to preventing losses to the state budget, and to prevent and warn for acts of tax evasion and fraud.

According to the report of the General Department of Taxation, the application of risk management techniques to tax inspection and examination, the tax office has shortened the time of inspection and examination at the office for the payer. This has reduced the problems to taxpayers while still ensuring efficiency in detecting taxpayers' violations of tax law.

From now to the end of the year, the entire tax branch must continue to inspect and examine enterprises to ensure inspection and examination reaching 18.5% of operating enterprises under the assigned plan. With a large volume of work, the task is not simple (to rectify the inspection and examination), the General Department of Taxation has continuously requested the Tax Department of provinces and cities under the central government to supplement maximum powers for tax inspection and examination; Assigning specific tasks and controlling work evaluation to strive to complete the assigned plan of each civil servant. However, according to a tax officer, the number of enterprises is growing continuously, while the number of civil servants doing the inspection work is weak. For example, in big districts like Thanh Xuan or Nam Tu Liem (Hanoi), the average number of enterprises here is 300-400 per civil servant. Therefore, the "overload" in the inspections is unavoidable.

Electrification to avoid influencing taxpayers

Currently, the tax authorities are applying the risk management mechanism in tax administration (this mechanism is included in the Law No. 21/2012 / QH13 dated 20/11/2012 on amendment and supplementation of some Articles of Law on Tax Administration) for tax administration functions: tax registration; tax declaration and tax payment; tax refund; Determining and selecting taxpayers for inclusion in tax examination and inspection plans according to law provisions; managing tax debt management and enforcement of tax administrative decisions; Taxpayers shall be applied management measures in the creation, printing, issuance, management and use of tax prints ... Thereby, the tax authorities shall determine the taxpayers' with signs of risk to enhance management measures.

In order to increase the quality of inspection and examination of tax, according to the General Directorate of Taxation’s leaders, it is necessary to shift from pre-inspection to post-inspection in the risk management mechanism and intensify the inspection and examination with the target group of taxpayers that have high risk signs in tax administration and are located in the focus group for annual inspections.

In the draft Law on Tax Administration (amended), the drafting agency has improved the principle of inspection and examination of taxes applied under the mechanism of risk management and to conduct inspection and examination by electronic methods. Accordingly, the tax authorities will check the information on the enterprise on the data system to know the "health" situation of enterprises, the situation of production, business, the performance of tax obligations ... After analyzing this data, if there are signs of tax risk, the tax authorities will send an open letter requesting the enterprises to review and re-declare the tax according to the actual situation. If the enterprise does not re-declare, the tax office shall conduct the inspection according to regulations.

At the same time, the draft Law on Tax Administration (Amendment) also supplements and finalizes the content of tax inspection in accordance with the provisions of the Inspection Law to suit the particularities of inspection in the field of taxation. The drafting committee also set out the principle that the inspection and examination of tax will not obstruct the normal operation of the taxpayer agencies, organizations and individuals.

On the other hand, regarding the tax investigation, at the 27th session of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly, submitted to the Standing Committee of the National Assembly, Minister of Finance Mr Dinh Tien Dung said, according to current law, the customs office has the function of investigating and prosecuting the case but the tax office doesn’t have. Through the review of legal documents, the Government finds that the legal documents (Criminal Law) do not regulate tax agencies for having the function of investigating and prosecuting cases. During discussions, comments on the draft law, there are different opinions on the function of tax investigation. The first is that, according to the current Law on Tax Administration, the tax administration agency conduct tax administration according to its functions, including the function of inspection and examination. Through inspection and examination, the tax administration office has determined the amount of tax collected to be paid to the state, finding many cases of violation and at the same time transferred the case file to the police for investigation and for handling. Therefore, for this mechanism to be appropriate in the current context, it is unnecessary to supplement the investigation function to the tax authorities. The second type of opinion is that, in order to strengthen the authority of tax authorities to effectively administer tax administration and to reduce the pressure of criminalization of economic activities, according to international experience, it is not necessary to supplement the investigation of the tax authorities, similar to that of the customs authorities.

The draft law is designed by the Government according to the first opinion. However, Minister Dinh Tien Dung said that if the National Assembly decided to add investigation functions to the tax authorities, the Government will add a separate chapter to regulate this content.