Customs sector: 2020 Customs revenue exceeds target of VND 317 trillion

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Customs officers of HCM City process procedures for businesses. Photo: T.H

In 2020, the Customs sector was assigned a revenue estimate of VND 338,000 billion by the National Assembly, the Government and the Ministry of Finance. As of 12pm on December 31 the total State budget revenue from import-export activities of the entire Customs sector reached VND 317,090 billion, or 93.8% of the estimate, a decrease of 8.7% year-on-year.

Thus, this figure exceeded VND 12 trillion compared with the target assessed by the National Assembly, contributing to balancing the central budget. The revenue saw the positive result amid the 4% decrease in import turnover compared to the estimate.

This result is a great effort of the whole customs sector amid the development of pandemic and natural disasters. To achieve this result, from the beginning of the year, the Customs sector has implemented anti-revenue loss measures like tax debt collection and settlement, inspection and examination for businesses, inspection for businesses subject to tax exemption and tax reduction; strengthened export price control controls specified in the price database; closely inspected name, HS code and tax rate of goods at the stage of customs clearance and post customs audit to promptly detect and handle cases offalsedeclaration ofHS code or name of goods to enjoy a low tax rate.

As of December 15, the Customs revenue from the performance of anti-revenue loss measures hitVND 2,639 billion.

Speaking at the online conference summarising State budget revenues and expenditures in 2020 on the morning of December 31, Director General of the General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDVC) said the experience for anti-revenue loss and increase in the State revenue is to synchronously perform measures and coordinate management agencies.

Amid the pandemic which greatly affects goods clearance,additionally, in 2020 the import tax rates of goods that Vietnam signed FTAs for continues to deeply decrease, especially, goods with large turnover, high tax rates and a large proportion of revenue. Under the EVFTA, the import duties on nearly 100% of tariff lines and taxable import and export turnover of the two sides will be eliminated after ashort roadmap, making for adeep decrease in the import and export revenue.

The Customs sector has taken disease prevention measures, and made efforts to overcome difficulties, accelerated reform of administrative procedures, modernised the management of tax collection and payment and proposed effective solutions to achieve the highest revenue target.

In 2021, the GDVC has been assigned the revenue estimate of VND 315,000 billion by the National Assembly. To fulfill this task amid the domestic and international socio-economic situation hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Customs sector has reviewed and controlled revenues; proposed and deployed solutions for increase in revenue, and anti-revenue loss; and actively assessed the impact of international integration commitments on State budget revenues.

At the same time, it has focused on reviewing tax debt; classified tax debt groups and the debt status of businesses, provided measures for handling tax debt; drastically handled, coerced and collected outstanding tax debts and prevented new tax debts and tax debts as of December 31 in 2021 higher than in December 31, 2020.