Quickly implementing electronic invoice for business households

E-invoice deployment centre (General Department of Taxation). Photo: Thùy Linh

Be ready

After a favorable start in implementing e-invoices for businesses in six provinces and cities across the country (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Phu Tho, Quang Ninh, Hai Phong, Binh Dinh), the General Department of Taxation has directed the tax departments in these localities to promote the coverage of e-invoices for business households with the goal that by March 31, 2022, at least 70% of business households will apply them.

To fulfill this request of the General Department of Taxation, Hanoi Tax Department is urgently implementing the task. According to the Tax Department, after review, in 2022, the whole city would have nearly 9,000 business households and individuals registering to pay tax following the declaration method.

The Hanoi Tax Department has set a target by January 31, 2022, to complete the implementation of e-invoices for business households and individuals that register to pay tax by this method. Therefore, from the beginning of 2020, tax branches under the Tax Department have continuously conducted training sessions, supported and communicated on the use of e-invoices for hundreds of business households. After being instructed, most of the households agreed and registered to use them.

According to Mr. Vien Viet Hung, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Tax Department, the unit has directed tax branches to actively invite business households to the tax office or guide them in implementing the declaration method. By January 17, 2022, in Hanoi, 80% of households have successfully implemented the method of declaring and registering e-invoices.

Tran Ngoc Viet, owner of a business household in Dong Da district, said the policy of promoting the conversion of using e-invoices was reasonable, in line with the development trend in the 4.0 era. Moreover, the tax officer had guided individual and business households like his family in order to transfer.

Its own peculiarities

Deploying e-invoices for household businesses could not be as easy as that for enterprises due to the difference in operation. If the enterprise has an accounting department and a stable information technology infrastructure system, most of the business households are small business models, without an accounting department and with a low level of information technology. Thus, it requires tax authorities to have many supportive solutions.

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Lan Anh, Director of the Tax Administration Department for small and medium-sized enterprises, business households and individuals (General Department of Taxation), although the implementation of e-invoices had been carried out since mid-November 2021 in six provinces, the business households paying tax through the method of re-declaration which was implemented from January 1, 2022 (under Circular No. 88/2021/TT-BTC of the Ministry of Finance guiding the accounting regime for households and individuals business that took effect from January 1, 2022). Tax departments in phase 1, based on the list of business households paying tax following the declaration method to notify each household. In particular, business households should prepare conditions for information technology infrastructure, prepare and transfer e-invoice data to tax authorities, send e-invoices to buyers and other management contents related to the use of e-invoices.

Especially, if the household paying flat tax has a need to use e-invoices regularly, the tax authority shall guide them on the conversion to the form of tax payment according to the method of declaring and registering to use e-invoices complying with the regulations. In case the household paying flat tax only uses the e-invoice each time it is incurred, the tax authority shall guide the submission of a flat tax return for the year 2022 according to regulations, and when selling goods or providing services that need an invoice to be delivered to the customer, carry out the procedures for requesting the issuance of an e-invoice each time it arises.

In addition, there are a number of other cases where e-invoices are used each time they are incurred, including business individuals who do not regularly pay tax; business households paying tax by the declaration method which stopped or suspended operations or were coerced by the tax authority by stopping the use of invoices.

The General Department of Taxation said that in order to create the most favorable conditions for business households, in the future, there would be a project for suppliers to develop a mobile version of e-invoice software. Accordingly, users can create and export e-invoices on their mobile phones for free.

In addition, the creation of e-invoices from cash registers that connect and transmit data with tax authorities has been specifically guided in Circular No. 78/2021/TT-BTC. This was considered a breakthrough solution to prevent revenue loss, contribute to better tax management, and implement electronic personal income tax withholding documents from January 1, 2022.

Therefore, the General Department of Taxation requested that, in the future, tax departments should coordinate with the General Department of Taxation to build and complete an e-invoice project with the tax authority's code generated from the cash register.