Ho Chi Minh City Customs deploys solutions to collect over 900 billion vnd of tax debts

	Problems in the handling of tax debts
	Tax debt management: Which regulations should be revised?
	Hanoi announces names of 149 enterprises with tax debt

According to the analysis of the Import-Export Duty Division of the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, the management and recovery of tax debts in 2016 of the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department in general, and Customs units, in particular, were not effective. Although the law stipulated that the tax must be paid before the Customs clearance, a number of tax debts always increased in the reporting period. By February 28, 2017, the amount of incurred tax debts in the Department against the same period in 2016 was nearly 809 billion vnd.

The reasons for the incurred tax amount were that the Branches imposed tax after Customs clearance, but the enterprises did not observe and made complaints, even enterprises fled, closed their tax codes and no longer operated at the registered business address; tax imposition for goods of export production for enterprises which did not come to liquidate the contract; duty-free goods for national defense and security which were waiting for decision on tax exemption. In some cases, enterprises were waiting for the cancellation of declarations and some enterprises paid to wrong beneficiary units and were waiting for a correction.

Therefore, the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department determined that the promotion of tax debt management to effectively handle and collect the tax debts and reduce the tax debt rate and avoid new tax debts incurred was one of the tasks to enhance the collection of the State budget in 2017. At the conference, representatives of the Customs Branches which had incurred tax debts said that the main reason was that enterprises massively imported consignments and declared low prices and refused to consult prices when being questioned by the Customs for Customs clearance. When the Customs authority implemented the post-clearance audit, enterprises did not collaborate and even many enterprises left out of registered business address.

Deputy Manager of Customs Branch of Sai Gon Port Zone 1, Le Van Nhien stated that the incurred tax debt of nearly 100 billion vnd in his Branch in the recent times was mainly due to the tax imposition from the result of the post-clearance audit for imported goods, but enterprises did not pay the tax. Currently, the Brach has listed some large enterprises to transfer to Public Security to collect the tax debts.

As stated by the Deputy Manager of the Tan Son Nhat International border gate Customs Branch Tran Ngoc Anh, the tax debts in the Branch increased more 10 billion vnd of which 7 billion vnd was due to the tax imposition from post clearance audit and enterprises ran away, so that collection of tax debts was difficult. In which there was the case where an enterprise imported electronic components, memory card and declared low prices and avoided the price consultancy for Customs clearance. When the Customs authority carried out the post clearance audit and imposed a tax for consignments was valued at more than 5 billion vnd, the enterprise fled away. Through the verification, the Branch discovered that members of the enterprise were one 19 years old girl and one 21 years old girl whose dossiers were abused to establish the enterprise to import goods and evade the tax.

A representative of Customs Branch of Sai Gon Port Zone 3 noted that due to the objective reason that bank did not collaborate to collect the tax debts, the Branch met difficulties in collecting the incurred debts of over 15 years in accordance with the Law on tax administration. So that the Branch requested the Leaders of Department to consider and proposed to relieve these tax debts.

Mr. Huynh Trung Kien, Deputy Manager of the Investment Customs Branch said that if the enterprise management mechanism after licensing was not revised, the tax debts of enterprises would hardly change. Many solutions to collect tax debts in line with Law on tax administration were no longer suitable such as: nationwide enforcement or sending to the local Tax authorities to revoke receipts…. were no longer effective

Regarding the difficulties in procedures for tax relief, Mr. Le Chien Thang, Deputy Manager of the Customs Branch of Sai Gon Port Zone 4 said that presently, the tax debts which were impossible to be collected were mainly in enterprises which were going to stop their operations, or stopped their operations but have been not dissolved. The tax debt relief is only applied for dissolved and bankrupted State-owned enterprises, not applied for limited companies and private enterprises.

Being the Branch with largest incurred tax debts in the Department with more than 700 billion vnd, the representative of Customs Post Clearance Audit Branch acknowledged that these incurred debts were from 5 enterprises through the post-customs clearance audit. In which, there were tax debts of 600 billion vnd of Tan Thanh Do company, but this Company was complaining about the Decision on tax imposition of the Customs Branch. Whether the debt amounts were collected or not mainly depends on enterprises.

To collect the tax debts effectively, the Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department presented that the Department has directed to establish a Team to collect the tax debts from Department level to Branch level; and from now to the end of April 2017, the Branches must list the enterprises with tax debts, name and permanent residence of directors, and tax debt amount to send to the Import-Export Duty Division to select and publicize on the mass media. For some large tax debts in the recent times, the Department will consider and transfer them to the Public Security for collection.

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The Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department requested its Customs Branches to analyze and clarify the debts, especially incurred debts and state specific causes of those debts to issue effective solutions and overcoming. Dossier to urgent the tax debt collection must have sufficient information and follow all steps of tax debt collection as described in the Law on tax administration. The Department is striving to succeed the target of collecting tax debts of more than 9389 billion vnd.