Improving efficiency of tax administration until 2020: Institutional improvements play an important role

The specific results show that the tax sector has implemented administrative reform from the tax registration tax declaration, tax payment, tax refund through the simplification of procedures and forms to facilitate for the taxpayers while ensuring tax offices have enough information about taxpayers. Parallel, tax sector is integrating the State agencies are involved in the process of settling tax procedures for taxpayers.

The achievement in this process is implementing the electronic taxation (electronic tax declaration, electronic tax payment)over the country that basically meets the requirements of e-government implementation, facilitating for taxpayers in the performance of tax obligations. Specifically, the electronic tax declaration service has been piloted since 2009, there are more than 99% of the total number of enterprises operating tax declaration online. Along with the support for electronic tax declaration for enterprises, tax agencies have piloted declaration of the VAT and personal income tax on the renting houses of individuals in some provinces and cities.

In addition, the General Department of Taxation has cooperated with the State Treasury and commercial banks to implement electronic tax payment services. At this time, it has completed the connection with 43 commercial banks to deploy electronic tax payment services with the General Department of Taxation and 63 taxation departments; more than 98% of enterprises have registered with banks to use electronic tax payment services with the amount of tax collected to reach a high proportion of total revenue.

Electronic tax refund service has been applied in many localities. Up to now, there are more than 2,000 enterprises using electronic tax reimbursement services in the General Department of Taxation's Electronic Portal. By the end of 2017, this will be done with all taxpayers having needs at all tax authorities throughout the country.

The General Department of Taxation has also piloted using validated electronic invoice in 200 enterprises in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, total invoice amount of approximately 2.6 million invoices. The tax amount has been verified around 990 billion. The use of electronic invoices with the code to help enterprises save the time to register the use of the invoice from 5 days to 3 days maximum.

Inspection, examination, enforcement, recovery of tax debts, development of information technology ... are also actively implemented.

Ms. Le Thi Chinh - Deputy Director of the Reform and Modernization Department, General Department of Taxation, said that the top priority is to improve the tax administration. Firstly, Tax sector has to accelerate the reform of administrative procedures to reduce the cost of compliance with taxes by sampling, clearing and easy to implement. That help taxpayers acknowledge the government understand and ready to share difficulties with them in implementing tax obligations by reducing the compliance costs of taxpayers, focusing on the group of small and medium enterprises and business individuals; Secondly, Tax sector needs to amend and supplement the Tax regulation to apply electronic methods in the implementation of administrative procedures for tax registration, tax declaration, tax payment and the application of electronic invoices.The electronic invoices with codes aim to transform traditional tax management into electronic ones; Finally, We must improve the legal mechanism to regulate the operation of tax agents to support compliance of taxpayers.

Some main contents need to be amended in order to perfect the legal mechanism to regulate the operation of tax agents such as: supplementing regulations allowing both individuals and legal entities to provide services to tax agents; To broaden the scope of professional practice of tax agents to allow them to provide tax consultancy services, review accounting books, financial statements and representatives of taxpayers participating in the process of competition litigation in related matters ...; To amend and supplement provisions to transfer step by step a number of tax administration activities to tax agents and the staff often agent for professional organizations and professional associations; To encourage taxpayers to use tax agent services through the issuance of a number of procedural incentives for taxpayers using tax agent services and allowing tax agents to participate in supervising production, Trading and using invoices for newly established taxpayers.

Ensuring the legal basis for the application of risk management in tax administration should be taken into account by developing and regularly updating the set of criteria and indicators for risk management in tax administration. The Establishing, reviewing and finalizing tax administration regulations for cross-border transactions, transactions of affiliated enterprises, etc.

In addition, the tax office should propose to complete the regulations to ensure the development of a comprehensive and accurate database of taxpayers through the study and issuance of regulations on the creation and use of information which meets the requirement of internal tax office; the regulations on coordination, sharing and cross-checking within the finance sector and between the Ministry of Finance and relevant ministries. In particular, re-design the tax administration process to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of tax administration and in accordance with new technology solutions developed in accordance with international tax standards.

According to Ms. Le Thi Chinh, besides the improvement of management institutions, the tax branch will continue to support the compliance of taxpayers; Improve the compliance of taxpayers through the application of risk management methods in tax administration; To build a complete, accurate and focused tax information system; To raise the quality of tax settlement work; a solution to perfect the system of indicators for assessing the effectiveness of tax administration; organizational structure and human resources; monitor and manage performance, financial planning. These are effective solutions to improve the efficiency of tax administration until 2020.